Gradation
by karebear
Summary: "gradual change along a scale or series" Kaidan works to rebuild a relationship with the woman he doesn't quite trust anymore but never stopped loving. Kaidan/femShep, Mass Effect 3
1. I'm Trying, I'm Trying

Title: Gradation  
Author: karebear  
Rating: M  
Characters: Shepard (female), Kaidan  
Standard Disclaimer (Mass Effect): I know, I know: I'm so late to Mass Effect! Not suprisingly, Bioware's done it again and got me all caught up in their world.  
Summary/Notes: A sequel of sorts to "Thermodynamics" but also capable of standing alone. That story was the Kaidan/Shepard relationship through ME 1 & 2 mostly from Shepard's side, this is ME3, from Kaidan's: "I want to understand what this is between us, and make it real." Exactly.

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_"I'm trying, I'm trying_  
_To let you know just how much you mean to me_  
_And after all the things we put each other through_  
_And I would drive on to the end with you"_  
- My Chemical Romance, "Demolition Lovers"

Kaidan feels a little thrill of electricity as Commander Shepard enters the room, a whisper preceding her presence, like a wave. It's not like this base exists solely for her benefit... except that from the way career soldiers stop what they're doing to watch her walk by, and the rumors that fly around and the way that everybody acts like she's more _legend_ than disgraced former officer - which, to be fair, she _is_ - it's exactly like that. People find reasons to linger in the halls, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Savior of the Citadel, who died and came back to life. Whether or not she is a traitor is still open for debate, and Kaidan cringes when he's forced to acknowledge that he once called her exactly that.

As always, she shoves her way through the artificial silence of the stilled command center, seemingly oblivious to the chaos she leaves in her wake. Somehow, even Anderson seems smaller in her shadow. Despite the fact that she's allowed nowhere without an armed guard, there is no question who is calling the shots here.

And despite the urgency of the situation that's temporarily sprung her from the very well furnished prison cell they've had her hidden in, she stops when she sees him, and the uniformed men with guns escorting her are forced to wait.

She says nothing, only raises an eyebrow, and Kaidan winces slightly, knowing she's probably expecting a fight like the one they'd had the last time he saw her. He freezes, caught in her gaze, and shakes his head slightly. His fingers twitch at his side as his body sends signals to his brain that he doesn't _want_ to fight. His muscles still remember the weight of her in his arms, his skin flushes with the memory of her warmth against it. He wants that back again, _needs it,_ desperately.

"Shepard..." he whispers, the words spilling from his lips. She watches him with a guarded smile, still off-balance. Seeing her again feels exactly like he'd always figured it would, and that's the surprising thing. He's worked so hard to move past her, and he's clearly convinced most people that he can stay focused on the job. Alliance solider, that's who he is now. It's who he always has been.

And Shepard... she's on lockdown, relieved of duty, he's pretty sure the question of whether there might someday be a court martial hasn't actually been settled. Anderson fought with everything he had to vouch for her. Kaidan couldn't even bring himself to go see her, because what exactly was he supposed to say?

He still feels like an idiot for wrecking things so spectacularly on Horizon, but there's still the nagging whisper in his brain, an ache in his stomach, because he cannot actually tell himself that he was _wrong_. Cerberus owned her for _years_, and now... now he doesn't know what to expect, except that for everything his head tells him, he still _feels something_ when he looks at her, he still _cares_.

"Major?" she asks, her gaze flicking from his insignia up to his face, and he sees the confusion reflected in her eyes even as she tries to look like it doesn't bother her, being left out of the loop. The Shepard he remembers couldn't stand being left out of the action.

"You hadn't heard?" Anderson asks her, and she shakes her head.

"Sorry, Shepard," Kaidan says softly, although what is he apologizing for? Not telling her about his promotion? Or... everything else.

He shakes it off. They're not here to live out the kind of bad television relationship dramas she's probably been stuck watching in the secure apartment she's not allowed to leave. The shit is about to seriously hit the fan, it has to be. It's the only reason Shepard gets called in on anything.

"It's okay. It's... good to see you again, Kaidan."

"Yeah."

It really is. He finds himself surprised by how much better he feels now that she's here, how just a brief conversation that didn't completely implode fills him with confidence. He shakes his head, watching her follow Anderson, watching her step, all business. Which makes sense. He'd be pretty nervous too, if he were going in to meet the defense committee who'd stripped him of his command and had him under house arrest for almost a year.

"You know the Commander?"

Kaidan turns, acknowledging the younger soldier who'd escorted Shepard up here. Her assigned babysitter, and he finds himself sympathizing with Lieutenant Vega, because he knows exactly how Shepard must be responding to her change of circumstances. The fact that the facility is still standing and that she's still in it proves that she's taking it better than he'd imagined she would. Hell, maybe she _is_ enjoying the enforced vacation. How many times can one woman be expected to save the entire galaxy anyway?

_You know the Commander?_

Does he?_  
_

Kaidan knows the woman he'd served under and fought with against a threat no one else believed in, one of the few who saw beyond the L2 implant in his head and talked to _him_. For sure the only CO who'd stayed with him through one of his worse migraines instead of just dumping him in medbay with the equivalent of a repair order. Also the only CO he'd ever slept with, a fact which is probably among the Alliance's worst kept secrets.

He thought he'd loved her, once. And now... now he doesn't know who she is anymore, and he doesn't know who he is without her.

"I used to," he tells Vega, and the other man gives a snort of acknowledgement and pushes past him to linger around the door he doesn't have the security clearance to go beyond, although the woman he's supposed to be guarding does.

Kaidan waits. It seems he's been doing that a lot lately. His biotic trainees keep him busy and distracted, which is only a blessing, but being grounded, even if it's for a good cause, leaves him feeling frustrated and ironically adrift. Being grounded on the same base as Shepard is just _cruel_. He is so close and so far from what he wants.

When he couldn't see her he managed to convince himself that he doesn't _know_ what he wants, but now that she's right here, now that they've talked... he feels the same as he's always felt. He thinks he loves her _now_, but the words catch in his throat, and so much has changed, _she's_ changed, he cannot lose her again. Better if she's safe, even if it's away from him, isn't it?

He feels the spike of energy that is usually his most reliable warning of an impending headache, and he forces himself to breathe, concentrating enough to relax his muscles and take stock of the stresses and strains of his body. He's been playing it too risky lately: not enough food, not enough sleep. He pulls out one of the emergency nutrition bars biotics are always authorized to carry because of the havoc their abilities wreak on normal human metabolism. The thing shares its texture and flavor with cheap drywall, but he's gotten used to it over the years and barely notices as he chews and swallows mechanically.

The hum of conversation slowly grows louder as people get back to work now that Shepard's out of the room. Kaidan resists the urge to follow her into the council meeting - not that he has the clearance for that, but she'd never cared about the regs when he'd tagged along with her on the Normandy, and he kind of misses that. He'd gotten through all kinds of red tape on the Citadel because he'd been with her: C-Sec interrogations, several different embassies, not to mention successfully taking down a rogue Spectre. The upper echelons of the Alliance Navy seem almost small-time compared to all of that.

But he's not one for bucking the chain of command and never has been, and she damned well does that enough for the both of them on her own. If the committee wanted him in there, they'd have asked. He knows Shepard's only here because Anderson _believes_ her warnings about the Reapers. Kaidan wants so badly to trust her too, and having been there for the fight with Sovereign he'd rather them be prepared and wrong than the other way around. He _knows_ they're not ready, if the reports she's been filing without acknowledgement are true. He knows the brass thinks maybe if they ignore Shepard for long enough she'll go away, stop bothering them. Kaidan could tell them how well that plan is likely to work.

_"Maybe when things settle down,"_ he'd written Shepard a long time ago, but he'd chickened out on that too.

He finishes choking down his snack and wipes the crumbs off his pants, figuring he'll suck it up and talk to her when she gets out of this meeting. Maybe just a coffee, or something. Not like they can do much, with her still behind locked doors and monitored, but he wants to try again, to talk to her. He _has to_ try again, there is so much he has to say, so much he needs to know and so much he needs for _her_ to know.

He smiles, comfortable with this new decision he's just made, and then he's nearly knocked over by another intense spike pulsing behind his eyelids and a bright flash of light.

And then there is shaking and screaming and the world collapses all around him as explosions rock the sky.


	2. Raising the Normandy

He opens his eyes to the pop and crackle of static, and Anderson's voice calling his name. "Major Alenko. Major Alenko, acknowledge!" Acknowledge... Kaidan fumbles for the radio at his belt.

"Yeah. I'm here." He chokes on the clouds of dust and debris and his head is screaming, pain stabbing behind his eyelids, but he runs his hand over his body and feels nothing but minor cuts and a whole lot of bruises. His muscles _hurt_ as he pulls himself up from the rubble and shattered glass, but he stands without too much difficulty. He blinks a few times and takes a cautious breath, then puts one foot in front of the other. He's got a job to do, and he's felt a hell of a lot worse than this and survived.

His training kicks in almost immediately, taking over as his stomach drops out when he surveys his surroundings, a callous rank-ordering of priorities the only thing that keeps him from being overwhelmed by guilt at the cold and lifeless bodies of men and women who had been thrown by the blast to land like broken dolls, some still lying in pools of blood where jagged scraps of metal had torn into them. He swallows hard, fighting his body's own need to panic, and flee, at the terrifying scene playing out outside: _Reapers_, more than one, stalking the Earth like they own it, each step adding to a trail of destruction several orders of magnitude worse than what he sees in this room. It had taken the combined efforts of every fleet the Citadel had access to for them to fight off a single Reaper scout three years ago, and it had been anything but an easy victory. But the only option other than fighting is rolling over and accepting death, and he does not plan on committing suicide. He refuses to accept the Reapers' victory as inevitable. Shepard didn't, when everyone told her that defeating one was impossible. She's the only person Kaidan's ever met who is quite literally too stubborn to die, and that's what they need right now. Shepard and the people who follow her are Earth's only remaining hope.

"Major, I can't raise the Normandy," Anderson's voice interrupts, and Kaidan frowns. The Normandy's buried deep in some garage, isn't it? From what he's heard, the Alliance is stripping out everything down to the faucets in the head just to make sure Cerberus can't use the ship to spy on them.

But it's not like the Reapers are likely to postpone their invasion so the tech guys can triple-check launch clearances, and where Shepard goes, the Normandy goes.

"I'll get on it," he replies. And then, after a slight pause. "Shep-"

"She's a little banged up, and a lot pissed off," Anderson cuts in immediately, and relief surges through Kaidan, enough to push him forward.

"So basically, the same as usual," he quips, as he scrambles over twisted metal and rock out onto the open ground that will get him to the airfield. If the Reapers haven't destroyed everything there already.

It feels wrong to be joking as the world burns around him, but in the military they have all learned that inappropriate humor is sometimes the only thing that keeps the weight of reality from crushing you. A soldier who takes everything too seriously, who is paralyzed by fear, is worse than useless.

He still almost falters when he finds himself at the edge of a smoking crater that used to be a park. Kids played here almost every afternoon, he'd even talked to a few of them, the fearless ones who run up to show the real Alliance solider their toy versions of the ships that are docked in the hangar he's trying to get to now. Most of them are military brats, with parents working on the base, and the older ones had a habit of asking him about his postings and trying to figure out if he'd ever met anybody in their family. The little ones just like to pester him until he shows off his biotic capabilities in a simple but harmless way: moving something with his mind, or creating a tiny firework of artificial light. It surprises him sometimes, how what he does can still be viewed with wonder. The Alliance military has mostly gotten used to biotics now, it's nothing special anymore. If it's acknowledged at all it's only in the negative sense: biotics are unstable and dangerous. Making those kids laugh was a necessary counter to all of that pressure, and now Kaidan finds himself wondering if any of them are even still alive.

With heavy footprints, he routes his way around the crater. Marine training means he can run over uneven terrain without thinking about it, yet he still finds himself shaken and jolted every other step by the impact tremors created by every step the nearby Reaper takes. He is no more significant than an insect to that monstrosity in the sky. It will destroy him and everything he's ever known as easily as stepping on an anthill. Kaidan blocks out those thoughts and shuts down the part of his brain that reacts to the primal terror of the Reaper's presence, concentrating instead on getting to the Normandy, as quickly as he can. There is no time to waste.

It would be bad enough if the only threat was the Reapers' continuous aerial assault, those superheated lasers that annihilate anything caught in their path. But as Kaidan skirts the fractured fenceline trying to dodge them, ducking into buildings that no longer have walls, a wave of husks - once living human beings - throws itself at him. He fires blindly until the assault stops and looks down to see more broken corpses than he can easily count piled around his feet. Some of them still spark with the remnants of the biotic charges he'd hit them with, and spent thermal clips litter the ground. He takes a few quick breaths, and runs again.

The radio at his hip still sputters out panicked calls for help and the more controlled requests for status reports from senior officers. Anyone who can find a working frequency does, and their words all cut into one another, overwhelmed by bursts of hissing static and the high-pitched whine of electronic feedback. What little sense he can make of it all is overwhelmingly _not good_. But Anderson is still alive, making slow but steady progress toward the landing zone, and Shepard apparently hasn't gone too soft in her months off-duty, because she's holding her own against more of the husks he'd just fought his way through, keeping herself clear, and waiting for a pickup. Just like old times.

Kaidan is surprised by the giddiness he feels at the sight of the familiar shadow passing over him in the sky. He hasn't set foot on the Normandy in over three years, and this isn't the same ship. _That_ Normandy is a crumbling wreck buried under the drifting snows of Alchera. But the voice cutting through all of the static to call him out on a private channel is exactly the same. "About damn time!"

"Joker?"

"None other. C'mon. Get your ass up here." The Normandy swoops in so low that Kaidan barely has to jump to haul himself smoothly into the cargo bay. He tucks himself behind the still-opened crates of equipment and tools scattered all over the place, and does his best to ignore the hostile glares the uniformed MPs are shooting in his direction. Wind howls loud across open sky, the ramp is angled sharply down; from here it looks like a knife cutting through the ground beneath their feet. As he watches, people below them scramble like ants. And the Reapers continue stalking the Earth, here from out of nightmares, to harvest and destroy.

Kaidan clings tightly to his pistol and barely keeps himself from wasting the few shots he has remaining firing into the empty air, just to feel like he's doing something. He listens to the chatter cutting through the shifting bands of his radio, and flips tiny biotic pulses between his fingers as he tries to convince himself that it's a good thing he's hearing less screaming now, when the truth of it aches deep under his ribcage: there is nothing left but silence and static. Everyone is dead.

"You okay, Alenko?" Joker asks, a quiet voice in his ear.

Kaidan watches Vancouver burn, and shakes his head. "No," he whispers.

There is a pause, so long that he begins to think that maybe he hadn't responded aloud after all. "Yeah, I know," Jeff Moreau replies, soft and serious.


	3. Old Soldiers

Kaidan feels the Normandy's sudden acceleration and watches as the ground below him blurs into nothing more than heat and color, and he understands what Joker doesn't need to say: _let's go get her_.

He grabs one of the straps hanging from the ceiling, meant to secure cargo, but it will support him just as well. He clicks his gun smoothly into its holster and reaches out a hand, ready to catch Shepard as she jumps from a precarious outcropping into his waiting arms. His chest constricts when he sees her, the same as always: hair a wild mess, armor scorched and dirty, soaked with sweat and breathing hard; beautiful. Relief washes over him, and the barest spark of hope. "Welcome aboard," he tells her, as he lets go of her hand. Shepard nods, and flashes him the tiniest of smiles.

"Thanks," she breathes, and Kaidan nods as his stomach flutters. In this moment it feels like no time has past at all, like nothing is different between them. The two of them together, on the Normandy, ready to take on the galaxy and win. With Shepard close enough to touch, her breathing echoing in his ear, he almost believes that they can do it.

He turns back to the open cargo hatch, loud buffets of wind still pushing in as the Normandy hovers low to the ground, waiting, and that's how he notices Anderson slowing, before Shepard does. He holds his breath and shakes his head, willing the Admiral to change his mind.

"Come on!" Shepard yells.

"I'm not going," Anderson tells her, as an Alliance dropship screams behind him, full of other soldiers who need his leadership more than the Normandy does, even if Shepard will never admit it.

"The hell you aren't!" she screams, pushing herself closer to Anderson, until Kaidan is afraid she's going to jump out of the Normandy and haul the other man in without giving him a say in the matter.

Even after all this time, Kaidan knows that Shepard still thinks of the Normandy as Anderson's ship. And he knows just as well that Anderson would never let her get away with pushing it back on him.

"I'm too old for this," he tells her sternly, a bit of self-deprecating honesty. But Kaidan and Shepard both know what he isn't saying. He's not staying behind for a vacation. He is voluntarily remaining behind on a literal hell on Earth, waiting for rescue. Fighting for survival, a gamble with odds that are not in their favor. Anderson knows it too. His eyes are dark and serious as he holds their gaze. He's old enough to die if it comes to that, he's lived a long life already. There's one more fight left in him, but only if she lights the flickering spark of the torch he's entrusting to her. "Shepard, this isn't a fight we can win. Not without help. The Council will listen to you."

"What if they _don't?_" she cries.

The pain in her voice cuts through all of Kaidan's defenses. He recognizes it, from the dark midnights on the Normandy when she'd let her heroic persona crumble as he held her in his arms. It cuts her deeply, watching people die. Ashley's sacrifice had hit her hard, but he may be the only one who knows how personally Shepard took every civilian colonist she couldn't save; on Eden Prime, and Feros, and the isolated worlds where Cerberus techs or the galaxy's wild predators overwhelmed fledgling communities without the numbers or the equipment to survive. Those nights were the worst, she'd wake up screaming names he never recognized, the family that no longer exists anywhere but in her blood-soaked memories, and her desperate determination to make sure it never happens again if she can stop it.

Shepard never faltered when it came to protecting her squad; bullets flew from her pistol with unnatural precision to hit those formerly human husks right between the eyes, and in the heat of a firefight she ripped apart the rushing swarms of geth and rachni and thorian-controlled slaves with biotic attacks that surged from her instinctively, a response beyond the level of thought. But in the aftermath of those battles, Kaidan would find her in some dark cranny of the ship with her com turned off, punching the unyielding bulkhead until her hands came away slick with blood. He'd pull out the medigel and patch her up, staying with her until he knew for sure that she understood she wasn't responsible for the life of every being in the galaxy. No soldier can save everyone, and no one expects her to. It doesn't stop her from breaking a little more inside every time she fails to do the impossible.

Kaidan wants more than anything to be there for her again, and he snarls at Anderson, ready to kick the Admiral's ass for abandoning Shepard like this when more than anything she needs someone to take some of the weight off her shoulders. Or maybe he's just pissed at the old man for kicking them out of the fight. They're _Marines__;_ it goes against everything that is in him to walk away from this. Earth is burning, and he is _running_? This is his _home_, he needs to stay, to hold the line.

"_Make them listen_," Anderson insists. "Go! That's an order."

"I don't take orders from you anymore, remember?" Kaidan can't help but smile at the familiar sarcastic defiance. That's Shepard. Even, and especially, with those she respects the most.

He gives the Admiral a nod, accepting the unspoken charge: keep my girl safe. Kaidan knows Shepard's the closest thing to a daughter Anderson has, this has got to be tearing him up inside. But you'd never know it, as the old man tosses something in their direction. There's a flash of metal as it flies toward them, caught by the wind. Shepard catches it with her eyes closed.

Kaidan recognizes the dogtags swinging on the old, cheap chain. He reaches for his, cold against his skin, just above his heart. This is who they are: old soldiers.

He thinks it sucks that the Alliance would abandon Shepard, take _everything_ from her, only to use her when they have literally no other option. They do not ask for her help, they _demand_ it, knowing that she will fight and die to save humanity because nobody else will do it. Cerberus had done it to her too, and it is _really hard_, in moments like these, for Kaidan to remember why the Alliance deserves his loyalty. It's the same Navy that _still_ refuses to admit culpability in the disastrous first attempts at cultivating human biotics. Children _died_, and others are permanently damaged, left to fend for themselves, their families left powerless and without closure because the records from those early days out on Jump Zero are still classified.

But Kaidan knows that humanity will die, out there among the stars, without good soldiers to fight for it, and he is not the kind of selfish rat bastard who will let innocent people die to make a point. And neither is Shepard, not even on her worst days. She fights for the Alliance because they were there to haul her up from the ashes on Mindoir. Even though if they'd had a real garrison in the first place instead of just a half-assed recruitment station manned by a VI and a couple of kids with guns they'd never really used, the Batarians might not have been able to eradicate the colony in the first place. Anderson had been the one to make Shepard into the woman she is now. He'd taken a broken and angry teenage girl and forged her into a fighter, and he returns the dogtags he'd kept next to his own every day of the past eleven months because she deserves to wear them. "Consider yourself reinstated. Commander."

Shepard nods and clenches the dogtags into a tight fist. "I'll be back for you," she insists. Kaidan hears her voice breaking and wonders if anyone else notices. Anderson must. "I'm gonna bring every fleet in the galaxy. So don't you dare die on me, old man."

"Absolutely not," Anderson promises, giving her a parade-quality salute as the Normandy picks up speed and altitude. "Good luck, Shepard."

Kaidan watches him disappear behind the crumpling stacks of rubble, until all there is left to see is the staccato bursts of light pulsing out from the Admiral's rifle, and soon enough he can't even pick that out from the general tapestry of destruction spreading out below them. He grabs Shepard's hand and pulls her back into the darkened corners of the cargo bay, slapping the button that closes the hatch.

"He'll make it, Shepard," he says softly. They both know there aren't any guarantees, but if there was one person he'd bet on to survive an invasion and rally the rest of the planet around him while they're off begging for help, it's Anderson.

"He damn well better." Shepard checks her gun and draws in one last shaky breath before shoving her way past the still scowling MPs. Commander-mode, the only thing that will get her through this. "Come on, Alenko. We've got a job to do."


	4. A Close Copy

"Commander!" Kaidan smiles at the raw enthusiasm he hears in Joker's voice, unnecessarily loud over their heads. It makes it slightly easier to deal with the circumstances of their reunion, and he feels like he ought to thank the pilot for the smile on Shepard's face.

"Joker? That you?"

"Alive and kicking," the pilot confirms.

Kaidan knows the man has been through a hell of a lot with Shepard, and for a moment his breath is stolen by the memory of losing her: she'd gone back for Joker, just like Kaidan had known she would the minute he told her about the pilot's refusal to abandon ship; Shepard does not walk away from her crew. But it still eats away at him; a what-if guilt, this absolutely illogical certainty that if he'd stayed with her on the original Normandy, they could have all made it home unscathed.

Now, he's left wondering how much of the Shepard he knows is still there in this second-chance resurrection, and Joker doesn't have to wonder, because he'd been at her side for all that time that Kaidan can never get back.

"Commander, I've got a priority call from Admiral Hackett for you."

Shepard exhales, and for just a fraction of a second she looks _tired_, as tired as she _should_ feel, like she's ready to collapse. Kaidan knows as well as she does that when the leader of the Fifth Fleet has an assignment for her, it's the kind of mission that guarantees a medal sent to your next of kin. "Patch him through, Joker."

"Sure thing."

If Shepard looks like hell, Hackett looks a few orders of magnitude worse than that. The signal on his end is barely holding, flickering in and out. Kaidan hears only a few scattered words from where he's standing, a few feet behind Shepard and farther away from the mic. What he catches is telling enough though: "Mars," "Prothean," and "Doctor T'Soni." Shepard salutes Hackett and the call cuts off with a sputtering "Fifth Fleet out" barely cutting through the static.

Kaidan frowns. "Mars? What's on Mars?"

"Prothean Archives," Shepard repeats distractedly. "You sick the day they had that field trip or something?"

It's true, Mars is the first base the Alliance had built, in the early days. Well, besides Luna - the moon - and that outpost is crumbling into obscurity now. The point is, everybody winds up on Mars for some reason or another fairly early in their career. It's like the bureaucrats feel a pressing need to show off the place that landed humanity on the intergalactic map. It's also the place most Earth-born recruits meet their first nonhuman. Of course he knows that the Prothean Archives are on Mars. What he _needs_ to know is how that is going to help them.

Shepard doesn't know either, and he knows better than to continue pushing it when her emotions are as frayed as they are: he'd barely stopped her from taking a swing at Vega when the Lieutenant questioned their flight to the Citadel. He catches her slowly inspecting her old locker, and the N7 armor that must have felt like losing a part of her body when it was taken away. "Get out of here, Alenko," she says softly. "Get your gear together."

Kaidan nods. He doesn't need much but the gun he's already holding, and she knows it, but they're beyond the point where they could use the time before a landing to crawl into a dark corner for a while. If she wants to be alone, to digest what's just happened and what's coming, he owes her that time and that space.

He heads for the bridge, his feet carrying him without thought. Mars is close but far away, they have to travel the distance the old-fashioned way, without a relay hop to cut the time. On the galaxy map, star systems look small, but when you're in one it's easy to remember how much open _nothing_ space is really made of. It will take them hours to get where they're going, hours when every _minute_ matters for Earth.

The Normandy - this Normandy - feels strange; it's too large, the angles and curves are just slightly off, he keeps looking for familiar everyday things: access hatches, first aid kits, emergency lights. They're there, but in the wrong places. It's a close copy, but still wrong. It almost makes it worse than if it were just a brand new ship; he's Navy, he's used to that, starting over in new places. It's trying to figure out how to fit in to something that's been gone for years that's complicated.

His old spot in the co-pilot's seat is open, and Joker spins around lazily and gives him a tired smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "Commander's good?" he asks, by way of greeting.

"Good enough," Kaidan replies, and Joker nods. How good can anyone be, when they can still see the Reapers choking out the Earth through the viewport?

From up here, the planet looks the same: smooth white clouds and blue ocean. From up here it seems quiet, like a calm ballet or something. The destruction won't be visible from space for a long time, not until the outcome is settled, one way or another. But Kaidan knows the fires are still burning. Every now and than a Reaper triggers an orbital strike, red light that rips more of the world away. He turns back to Joker. "Shouldn't you be flying?"

"Nah, EDI's got it."

"What?"

There is a musical chime, and a holographic sphere pops out from a module behind Joker's leather seat, flashing yellow and blue. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Major Alenko," an artificially pleasant female voice intones.

Kaidan raises an eyebrow. "Since when do you let the VI drive?"

"AI," Joker corrects, although Kaidan is hardly an expert on the line where one ends and the other begins. "And she's earned it."

"Saved our asses more than once," Shepard confirms, striding into the cockpit, armored up and ready to go. "It's really good to have you back in that seat, Lieut- Major. Sorry. Damn, Kaidan, you outrank me now."

"Shepard, the Normandy's still your ship. I'll follow you." He'd follow her regardless; chain of command has nothing to do with it. Shepard nods, and stares out at the desperate panorama playing out before their eyes.

"This was home, for you."

Kaidan nods, turning away from Shepard, and the view through the reinforced plexiglass, though he can't stop seeing it in his mind. "Yeah." He is suddenly jolted by the reminder that Earth _isn't_ home, for her. This kind of ruthless invasion had already erased the colony rock where she'd been born and raised, when she was still just a kid. It's easy to forget about that as he sits here wallowing in his own selfish pity. Earth at least still has a chance, slim as it might be. "Shepard, I -"

She rests a hand on his shoulder, and he swallows his protests. "I'm sorry, Kaidan," she says simply.

"Yeah." _I'm sorry._ What else can be said? "Thanks, Shepard."


	5. Storm's Coming

**Note:** I have decided to up the rating to M at this point, because of some language and violence in this chapter, and the knowledge that things will only get more intense as we move forward. Thank you to everyone who has been reviewing, favoriting, adding alerts, and chatting with me about this story: it truly means the world to me!

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Kaidan really tries, but he cannot stay focused on the mission briefing. Not that there's much to stay focused _on_ - Shepard's N7 _and_ a Spectre; if the Alliance _had_ intel or a plan, they wouldn't need her. The 'briefing' is little more than Shepard and Joker exchanging worried remarks about the lack of communication from the base, as Vega guides the shuttle down, more smoothly than Kaidan expected; he didn't know the LT could _fly_, had him figured for a groundpounder. "Massive storm headed our way."

"How far out?"

"Half an hour, tops. After that, we're gonna have trouble keeping comms with the Normandy."

Shepard nods, as if this is nothing more than a minor annoyance. Well, there's no sense in getting worked up about it, is there? Kaidan takes a breath and checks his suit seal and his gun, jumping out of the hatch right on her heels.

The horizon line is a swirling wall of dust and howling wind, _not_ something they want to get caught in. Vega whistles softly, sending a squeal of feedback piercing through their helmets' radio. "Damn. That storm looks a lot bigger from here."

"It's pretty typical for Mars, actually," Kaidan tells him. He wonders if Vega's ever been off Earth. The kid doesn't seem _that_ green, but he's still wide-eyed and jumpy. Or maybe it's just that he hasn't been on Shepard's team long enough to _know_ with absolute certainty that the very worst possible scenario is the one they'll be working with, without fail.

"Well, I'm glad _you're_ so optimistic," the Lieutenant mutters.

"I'm just saying: Reapers invading, the station offline... a little dust storm doesn't rate very high on my list of concerns."

"Cut the chatter!" Shepard snaps, and Kaidan grinds his teeth. He knows she's just on edge because of the situation. He'd be concerned if she wasn't. He scans the HUD in his helmet and tries to shake off the eerie sense of foreboding creeping up his spine. The Mars outpost is _always_ crowded, yet there is nothing here now. No movement. No sign of anything living. He tries to convince himself that they might just be bunkered down because of the storm. It's not impossible.

"Come on, let's get moving," Shepard insists.

Kaidan takes a few slow and careful steps, re-adjusting to the feel of moving his armored body in lower gravity. The footprints he leaves behind are clear and deep, though he knows the coming storm will erase them as surely as they've erased whatever traces the outpost's crew must've left as they went about their business.

"What's that?" Kaidan's heart sinks as his helmet automatically tightens focus on the dust-covered debris Vega's studying. No, not debris... this is a _person_. The body couldn't have been here long. He looks relatively untouched. And he's Alliance. Kaidan crouches down respectfully. There are no defensive wounds that he can see, none of the signs that the man had been involved in a fight. What _happened_ here?

He waves his omnitool over the dogtag and pulls up the man's service record. Sergeant Reeves. The tool automatically records a few images and marks the location, sending the file to Alliance command, although Kaidan squirms inside knowing how overwhelmed they must be by these reports right now.

"Semper fi," he whispers. There's nothing more he can do.

He turns back to Shepard, who gives him an approving nod. Even Vega seems to have calmed down, stilled by the reminder of why they're here.

"Come on," Shepard says. "We still need to figure out what's going on. Keep a low profile." Gunshots ring out before she finishes the command; each slow and deliberate pop echoing loudly as the audio package struggles to compensate with the sudden and overwhelming burst of noise.

"Holy shit!" Vega hisses. "They're _executing_ them."

Kaidan hasn't even finished ducking behind a large rock to scope out the situation before one of the men he's watching falls, his bodysuit useless against Shepard's armor piercing rounds. The rest of the squad jumps up, swinging wildly and firing streams of semi-automatic fire. "Well, they know we're here now," he announces, picking off another one at the edge of the group. One shot, then another, pouring everything he has into his need to gain retribution for the brothers killed in front of him. Shepard's shot may have been a tactically stupid risk, but he doesn't blame her at all.

"Those guys were Cerberus, weren't they?" James asks, unnecessarily as far as Kaidan is concerned.

"Sure looks like it," Shepard murmurs, tracing the too-familiar insignia on one of the fallen bodies. "What are they doing on Mars?"

"You don't know?" Kaidan spits.

Shepard whirls on him, freezing him into place with the heat of her voice. "I'm not with them anymore, if that's what you're asking."

"It wasn't!" he chokes out. "But you gotta admit, it's a little... suspicious." Kaidan has never trusted the Illusive Man or his guns-for-hire, but executing Alliance soldiers, men who looked like they'd _surrendered_, from what little they'd been able to see... this doesn't seem like their style. That's what Shepard says too, until Kaidan reminds her about Admiral Kahoku. For all their speeches about protecting humanity, Cerberus isn't above killing in cold blood, or taking out the Alliance when they're in the way. "For God's sake, Shepard! What about Akuze?"

It's a dirty move, and he knows it, but he doesn't feel like playing nice. Not today.

"Damn it, Kaidan! You of all people should know what I'm about. Trust me. _Please_."

The word hangs heavy in the air, a silent echo that punches right to the gut. She _needs him_, and he knows it. Hadn't he already decided that he'd take back what he said on Horizon if he could? And here he is doing it again. Cerberus guns were aimed at her just as much as him five minutes ago. And no matter what, this is _Shepard_. He _does_ trust her, and she should know that. He sighs. "I trust you Shepard, I do."

"Sure doesn't sound like it."

"I _do_," he repeats, more forcefully.

But that doesn't mean he's going to accept her actions without question, pretend everything's the same, like she can just walk back into his life without consequence. No shortcuts. He'd told her that a million lifetimes ago, and she'd mostly shrugged it off. Shepard walks a dangerous line, and Cerberus is built from and for shortcuts.

"Cerberus _built you_, from the ground up, you _worked for them_. They gave you a ship, resources... I can't... I just need a straight answer!"

"And _I_ need _you_ to listen to _me_!" she yells right back. The audio buds inside his helmet crackle and snap out before his eardrum can be damaged from the amplified sound. He has no trouble hearing her anyway. "I have had _no contact_ with Cerberus since I destroyed the Collector base and I have no idea why they're here or what they want! Is that enough for you, or do you want a polygraph? Interrogation records? I'm sure you could dig them out of my file if you tried hard enough. What the hell, Kaidan? Exactly how much proof do you want from me? Fuck! You either believe me or you don't!"

"I -" The sudden rumble and crash of metal, something moving loudly toward him, silences whatever he was about to say. He crouches behind cover as Shepard tracks her gun toward the sound, and an Asari falls into an awkward landing at his feet, breathing hard and looking back over her shoulder. Kaidan can feel the surge of active biotic energy swirling within her, like a static charge that pulls him closer. "Liara?"

She spins away from him and empties her gun into two large Cerberus-armored men charging her without so much as a pause. Kaidan blinks, taking an instinctive step back from the smoking corpses, one of which is contorted into an angle no human body should twist into, the hallmark of a particularly brutal biotic throw. What happened to the awkward historian he used to know?

"Kaidan," Liara acknowledges. "And Shepard. Thank the Goddess you're alive, both of you! I was worried, when the reports came in. They hit Earth hard."

"Yeah," Kaidan replies. It's still not something he wants to talk about. Liara's only seen reports, and she's had her own concerns, with the Cerberus assault on the facility. But his heart is still being ripped apart by the knowledge of what's happening back on Earth, fear for the family he'd left behind. "It was... hard, to leave like that."

"Kaidan, I am sorry," Liara tells him quietly.

He frowns, studying her. She was _worried_? That she cares about the human homeworld at all is surprising enough; that she thought about _him_, specifically, after three years and when they'd never particularly gotten along in the first place... he hadn't expected that, but it makes him feel surprisingly reassured. Liara's the first step, if _she_ cares, maybe it's proof that others will too: other Asari, and Turians, everybody else in the galaxy... maybe humans aren't as alone as they fear.

Kaidan can feel Vega pacing just over his shoulder, uncertain what to do. And Shepard is holding her breath, waiting for good news, something that will make sending them here worth it. "Please tell me you can help us, Liara."

"I can," the Asari replies confidently. "Well, maybe," she amends, a fraction of a second later. "I've discovered plans for a Prothean device, one that can destroy the Reapers."

"A weapon?"

"If we can build it. The Protheans ran out of time."

"We won't," Shepard insists, and Liara nods.

"Come on then. We can access the Archives via the tramway. Stay alert, it is likely that Cerberus will have men waiting for us."

Kaidan raises an eyebrow, still unused to Liara giving orders like she expects for them to be followed. But then, he's commanded squads too, and he imagines the biotic recruits who think he doesn't know they refer to him as "Major Pain-in-my-Ass" would be astounded if they saw how easily he lets Shepard tell him what to do.

"Vega, I need you to cover us in the shuttle," Shepard announces. "We'll need a quick exit if this goes south. Kaidan, with me."

Liara's right about the Cerberus patrols; they haunt the facility in roving bands, but there is still no sign of the Alliance personnel who should have been working here. It makes him nervous, this absolute uncertainty, on top of Cerberus making him nervous generally. It feels good to have a target to hit, to channel some of his energy into precise strikes that make sure these particular terrorists won't get the chance to hurt anybody else.

He screams in frustration when they clear the room only to find that they've already been locked out of their only possible route to the Prothean device they so desperately need. He doesn't understand why Cerberus is fighting them. Don't they understand? _There is only one side in this war_: if _everyone_ in the galaxy does not stand together, the Reapers will destroy them _all_. Dead Cerberus - dead _people_ - is a needless waste.

Kaidan follows the GPS in his omnitool to an emergency access hatch that leads to the roof, the red light at its edges flickering on and off as the wind howls just outside. It echoes through the crawlspace and, if anything, gets even louder when they get outside.

"That storm's getting closer," Shepard observes. It's true. The wind whips at them with force that shakes even the thick supports of the maintenance walkway they're using, flinging dirt and dust like rain.

Kaidan stares out into the whirlwind and takes another step forward. Despite his earlier ranking of priorities, he'd rather be up against Cerberus than the inevitable destruction nature will throw at them. Some things are just too big to fight. "I'd say it's already here."


	6. Brutal, Even By Cerberus Standards

At the other end of the maintenance access walkway, the door is open, waiting for them. Trap?

Kaidan throws a sideways glance toward Shepard, who lingers behind Liara. "What do you think?" she asks the Asari.

"That airlock shouldn't be open," Liara confirms.

And when Shepard steps cautiously into the room, she sees why. Her flashlight sweeps over the crumpled bodies: the Alliance staff they've been looking for this whole time. "Someone vented the air from this room while they were still in here. It looks like... they died trying to claw their way out."

Kaidan snaps his own light over the scene, heart sinking. "This is brutal, even by Cerberus standards."

Shepard tenses up just for a moment, then nods agreement and pushes forward, tapping into a computer console to unlock the door to the tram station, while Liara finds another access point that gets them the feeds from the security cameras, proof of the Cerberus infiltrator. Another shot to the back of the head, execution style, before the poor tech could even see it coming. He shivers. He knew Cerberus did some shady things, but _this_? He'd expect this kind of thing from the merc gangs that rule Omega, and the streets of Earth. Whatever they are now, Cerberus had once been a professional organization. And not the Alliance's enemy either, even if they did occasionally exchange philosophical debates via gunfire.

"No one else comes across!" the Cerberus mole shouts, on the video.

"That mean what I think it does?" Kaidan asks.

"We are locked out of the system, yes," Liara replies.

"And there's no other way across?"

"Not unless you would enjoy walking a couple dozen klicks through that storm."

"I don't suppose they'll just send us a tram if we ask nicely?" Shepard deadpans. But the idea sparks something in Kaidan's mind, and he heads for the nearest Cerberus-armored body dropped in the firefight.

"What've you got?" Shepard asks, dropping next to him as he kneels down next to the corpse, scanning his omnitool over it to look for the telltale frequency band. A soft ping, and he exhales, settling back on his heels. Sometimes things _do_ work out the way he needs them to.

"He's got a transmitter in his helmet," he explains. "I just need..." One final twist of his fingers under the base of the visor triggers the plexiglass shield to retract, giving him access to the aforementioned comm. And revealing the face underneath the helmet. Looking a corpse straight in the eyes is unsettling under any circumstances, but this is something else entirely. Set within that rotted flesh are cybernetic trails, cold electronics where human eyes had once been. He swallows the bile that rises up in his throat and turns to Shepard. "He looks like a husk."

"Yeah, not quite. But they definitely did something to him."

"And by 'they,' you mean Cerberus, right? My God, Shepard... they'd do this to _their own people_..."

She sighs, refusing to look at him. She won't look at the body either. "Kaidan, I don't want to fight about Cerberus anymore."

He looks up at her, and wishes that he hadn't, because at this angle, in this light... he can see the difference in her eyes. They've changed color. He remembers when they used to shift between green and blue seemingly at random, but now they do not shift at all, and they are always a brown so dark it is almost black. Still human-_looking_, but an easier pigment to fake. There are all kinds of subtle differences like this one that he's noticed but can't bring himself to mention, they leap out at him like warning bells. She's always been good at shooting, but now... she's _superhumanly_ good - she can line up a headshot before he's even gotten a visual; she references her HUD only as an afterthought. And he hasn't seen her use a biotic ability, not even once, not even something simple: she used to throw up a barrier before she even fired her weapon, now she's relying on conventional shields. It makes sense: nobody knows exactly how biotics work, not really; if you were creating a life that was half-artificial, it'd be an easy thing to get wrong, not worth the risk.

"Is that what they did to you?"

"How can you even say that, Kaidan? How can you compare me to him?" Kaidan cringes, because what he hears in Shepard's voice isn't anger, which he could deal with, but a raw wounded betrayal. She sounds... _scared_, more than anything. Scared of herself, or scared of him? Neither option is what he wants.

"They... rebuilt you," he says lamely, knowing how callous it sounds. "I don't... I don't know who you are, or _what_ you are. And I guess I just... I need to know if the woman that I remember, the woman that I followed to hell and back... the woman that I _love_... are you still in there, somewhere?"

"Kaidan..." Shepard reaches out a hand, but falters, pulling it back into a closed fist before her fingers come anywhere close to him. It's just as well, really - they're both in full armor, he wouldn't be able to feel the touch anyway. "Cerberus didn't change me, Kaidan. Or the way I feel about you."

"The way you..." His heart pounds and he swallows hard. It's the first indication she's given that the feelings he's trying so hard to keep controlled aren't one way.

She rolls her eyes, and flashes him a familiar smirk, no doubt astounded by his utter ineptitude. Were there... _signals_, or something? Was he supposed to have picked up on this? He's got his head so far up his own ass, he's so _sure_ there must be something wrong with her, _some reason_ why they can't be together... was it really this simple all along?

"Yeah, Kaidan," Shepard replies slyly, her voice full of musical laughter, _that_ hasn't changed. "You were right, about Ilos meaning everything. I... _fuck_, you're the only thing I ever wanted. They tell you I kept your ugly face in a picture frame in my cabin, the whole time I was _working for Cerberus_? Even after Horizon, you ass!"

She did _what_? Kaidan flushes. "No," he admits. "Uh... no one told me that."

"Figures," Shepard snorts, shaking her head. "But words won't be enough to convince you, will they?"

Heaven help him, she's still right. He always leaves himself an out, he will not trust anything that is too good to be true, and Shepard coming back to life, _for him_... it is the exact definition of the term.

"Probably not," he admits, hating himself for it. Why does he _insist_ on making things so complicated?

"You always were stubborn."

"Me!" he sputters. "Alliance Command _hates_ you. You know they've got all kinds of kids getting thrown in the brig for insubordination and claiming they learned it from you?"

"You gonna make me follow orders, _Major_?"

"_Hell_ no. I don't have that kind of death wish."

She laughs, and starts walking, away from the half-human body, the reminder she doesn't need of what Cerberus does. "Come on. Maybe we'll both find some answers."

"Yeah, maybe," Kaidan replies, trailing behind, as always.


	7. Take It Slow

**Note:** On order and timing - I played around a lot with this chapter (and I'm still not altogether happy with it, but it's time to move on!) For one thing, Kaidan really is a medical miracle, to recover from "severe brain trauma" so completely. I am the farthest thing from a medical expert, but I tried to get across a sense of what being in the hospital is like, which I know from having been there for family more than once. I tried to make Kaidan's experiences genuine, but concussion and brain trauma is unpredictable in the first place, and for the parts where all the serious medical stuff was going on, Kaidan was mostly out-of-it. He sleeps a lot, which makes for not much to write about. Which brings us to the other point: once I decided to tell the story from Kaidan's point of view, it means going out of order from Shepard's timeline. Kaidan does not remember the finer details of Mars when he initially wakes up, there are huge gaps in his knowledge. So it looks like I skipped a fair bit of the story, because I did, because _he_ did. Some of it will fill in later; Kaidan does spend a fair bit of time at Huerta Memorial... this is only the first chapter of at least two in the recovery process.

* * *

"Shepard..." Kaidan whispers. The single word triggers a coughing fit, his throat burns with a dry fire until someone pushes a straw through his lips. The effort it takes to suck down the cool water is exhausting. His eyes slip closed again. His head is screaming, the pain is overwhelming, licking his nerves raw, drilling at his skull until it feels like it has to be about to split open. It's worse than any previous migraine he can remember, which is really saying something.

"Easy there," a heavily-accented female voice says. The straw goes away, and he licks his lips, which are chapped and bloody under his tongue. He tries to blink his eyes open, but the light stabbing into them is unbearable. Tears blur his vision and he pulls away, burrowing into the soft pillow underneath his head. The movement causes another spike of agony to light up his brain. He tries to curse, or scream; but it comes out as more of a miserable groan. His is fairly certain the female voice is laughing at him. "Welcome back to the land of the living. Sorry it's so unpleasant."

"Was I dead?" he manages to rasp, reaching out for more water. The hand attached to the voice helps him drink.

"You were close, for a while there."

Images assault him: dark hollow eyes, deep scars with circuits behind them. "How close?"

He tries to sit up and a firecracker explodes behind his eyeballs. His fingers clench into a tight fist around his bedsheet. "Ow," he whines, pathetically.

"How much do you remember?"

He _tries_, he really does, but all he gets is color and pain, a jumble of input that it's impossible to make any sense of. He grasps at the pieces, pulling for anything he can use... a whirlwind of choking dust, dry red sand embedding itself in between the plates of his armor.

"Mars," he finally manages. And there are other memories, flickering at the edges of his mind: bright lights, and loud beeping, and Shepard's voice. "And Shepard."

"That's right," the doctor tells him. "The Commander did a damned good job looking after you. Your prognosis is very good, Major. Most people who sustain the type of injuries you did struggle to recover even partially. You're a very lucky man."

"Shepard saved my life?"

"Without a doubt." Out of the corner of his eye, Kaidan can see the doctor doing something, but his head feels fuzzy and _so damned heavy_.

When he opens his eyes again, he doesn't see anyone. It's easier to focus this time. It doesn't hurt as bad. He glances down, to see a taped-down patch of gauze covering a needle in his arm. Above his head, clear liquid drips down from an IV pouch. He's surrounded by a bunch of blinking lights and screens. He stares at them for awhile, until the dots of light blend with the liquid drip-drip-drip, sliding slowly down the clear tubing. His eyes slip closed.

The next time, he wakes up _because_ it hurts: the familiar streak of red behind his eyelids. Something pinches his arm, and he glances down to see the shiny, sharp needle pulling smoothly out from under his skin. "Sorry," says a young guy in cheerful pink scrubs. "Doc says it's time to lower the dosage."

They make him get up and try to walk. His muscles won't hold his weight, and he can't seem to remember what to do. Every step is awkward and painful. The nurse supports him, repeating what is probably supposed to be encouragement in what is probably supposed to be a soothing voice. He sounds like a nervous drill instructor - a contradiction in terms that only annoys and frustrates Kaidan even more. The hallway from his room to the patient lounge ought to take him no more than a minute to cross; it's been twenty. "You're doing fine, Major Alenko," the nurse soothes. Kaidan curses and tries to speed up. His head feels like a fish tank, like he's living underwater, everything slow and dysfunctional. His legs won't _listen_ when he tells them to move, and the next thing he knows, he's falling. He tries to catch himself and the world flashes white. The next time he opens his eyes, he's back in the damn bed.

"No biotics, Kaidan," Dr. Michel demands. "The implant complicates things. I want to monitor it closely."

He grinds his teeth. "I didn't mean to do it."

"You mean it fired without your control?"

"Not... exactly. Chip's been in my head a long time, Doctor. I don't really think about it anymore."

"Well, I need you to think about it now. L2's a hack job in the first place, I'm sure I don't need to tell you. The way it got shaken around in your brain... that you're sitting here talking to me, walking, with no permanent damage... I'll be honest, I wouldn't have predicted it. You're something of a medical miracle. Your migraines will probably get worse though. Even more so if you overdo it: it's very possible to fry out your own brain. Take it slow."

"Great," Kaidan spits.

He dreams about Jump Zero. He hasn't thought about Brain Camp in years; not since Shepard asked him about it. He sees nosebleeds and broken bones and bruises; late nights with kids trying to drown the strain with engine-brewed alcohol. And kids who just dropped dead, collapsing in the middle of an exercise, or setting their head down on the table in the mess and never waking up. The human brain is fragile. Even his.

They give him back his datapad, adjusted so that the writing is bigger, the buttons more sensitive, and the color contrast more pronounced. He scowls at the thing, trying to find the words to say what he wants. They swim in his mind, scrambled letters that leave him grasping at empty air. He finally manages to string together a message: I WANT TO SEE YOU. PLEASE.

He doesn't hit send.

He spends a couple of hours every day in the patient lounge. He can get there on his own now, leaning heavily on the wall for support. It only takes him ten minutes. The Reapers are all anybody talks about. The news reports loop a constant stream of planets under fire. The doctors herd most of the refugees into lower-priority clinics in the Wards, so he has no idea how many there are, or how bad it is. There are no reports from Earth, at least not publicly accessible. He's making his way back to his room to choke down a meal that's only marginally better than a field MRE when the minimal VI attached to his bracelet chimes and tells him he's got a visitor.

He doesn't know who he was expecting (_Shepard_, whispers some part of his brain. He sees her, in his mind: not hero-Shepard, new Shepard, but _his Shepard_, who giggles like a little girl when he teases her in bed. And then smacks him, also like a little girl. He pulls away from the memory. It hurts too much), but Ambassador Udina is certainly not someone he'd have even considered.

"They tell me your recovery is proceeding remarkably quickly," the politician says smoothly. Kaidan limps over to his bed - the only place to sit in the cramped room. He manages to pull himself onto it without shaking too badly, or crying. He's still sweating and far too exhausted for a walk across the room, but at least he won't pass out in front of humanity's spokesperson to the entire galaxy. He's never _liked_ Udina - the man's a slimy, weasely bastard - but Kaidan is an officer of the Alliance, and that means getting along with the diplomats and pencil-pushers.

"I'm doing alright," he concedes, trying to keep his voice neutral.

"I'm glad. Humanity needs every soldier we can get right now."

Kaidan can't help it, he snorts. Idiot bureaucrats ought to know better than to tell a Marine something he already knows. "No offense, sir, but humanity's needed soldiers for a long time. You're only asking now because you can't ignore it anymore."

"You're right."

"I... what?"

"I said 'you're right,' Major Alenko. The galaxy _runs_ on willingly ignoring the bad and scary things out there. We saw it in the fight against Saren, and we're seeing it again now. The Council will do everything in its power to pretend the Reapers don't exist, right until that invasion force is on their ass, utterly annihilating _their_ people. But humanity can't wait."

Kaidan studies the man, quirks an eyebrow as if to say 'And?' Once again, it's nothing he doesn't already know. But Udina doesn't give him anything.

Kaidan scrubs his eyes with the heel of his hand, willing the rhythmic spiking pulse behind his eyeballs to ease off. He looks up to see Udina staring at him, and he sighs. "Shepard's supposed to be..."

"Shepard's trying," Udina cuts in. "But she can't do it alone and we both know it. Humanity was supposed to gain the respect of the galaxy after the Battle of the Citadel, but they still block us at every possible opportunity. We have to start taking our own initiative. Acting for ourselves to get what we need. I'm looking to add to the ranks of the Spectres. I've seen your record, you're the perfect candidate."

"Sir, I can't even walk to the _lounge_." Kaidan can't help it, all of his anger and frustration and confusion seep into his voice.

"You won't be in this bed forever. Just think about it, Major."

"Yeah," Kaidan says carefully. "I'll do that."

"Good." Udina gives his shoulder a squeeze until Kaidan shakes him off. He's still a Marine, not a six-year-old boy.

Udina leaves and the nurse comes him to check on him. The nurse leaves and he flicks the channels on the screen above his head. He's bored enough to watch the commercials. They bleed into a wave of sound that washes over his him, a comforting background noise that he can't find the energy to silence.

He thinks about becoming a Spectre: able to do whatever needs to be done, no second-guessing, no waiting for the chain of command to grind through the backlogs of bureaucracy. Udina isn't wrong, humanity needs people who are ready to fight without holding back. He's just not sure if he's ready for that to be him. He needs help.

He pulls out his datapad and, for the first time, manages to compose an e-mail to Shepard that's coherent enough to send.


	8. Muscle Memory

Kaidan wakes up and stirs the mushy oatmeal around in his bowl listlessly. He knows he should eat; biotic metabolism still insists on a high caloric intake, even when he's not actually _doing_ anything.

"Not true," Dr. Michel insists when he gets whiny. "You're _healing_, Kaidan. That takes a tremendous amount of energy, it's a massive strain on your body." He nods, and picks out the chunks of dehydrated fruit, swallowing them down just to satisfy her. He mumbles something about maybe going back to sleep. He's just _tired_: tired of hurting, and tired of his brain not working right and his body not doing what he wants it to, and tired of _being tired_.

He has never felt more useless in his entire life, including those years when he was drifting after BAaT, getting blasted on Red Sand and hating himself for it. The drugs he's on now light up those same pathways of dependency. Another thing he'll have to fight when he gets out of here.

It still hurts to move much. He's covered in various shades of bruises and his left arm throbs with the lingering pain of a dozen needle injections. They're _always_ jabbing him for something - at least three or four different IV medications, saline drips, blood tests... he wonders what's in his blood that can tell them anything useful: it's his _brain_ that's the problem.

Not that there's any shortage of brain tests: hours encased in a tube so the doctors can take pictures of whatever's going on inside his head. He throws them for a loop, even the experienced ones, because L2 biotics don't look like a normal brain should, even when there's nothing actively wrong. They have to compare his current charts with the old ones in his file and hope for the best.

The doctors make him keep walking, they take him to another level of the hospital where there's a small gym so that he can do physical therapy every day with a peppy woman who seems to take pleasure in torturing him with a smile on her face. She reminds him of Ash. Every three days, a language specialist comes to his room with a datapad, to help him remember the words he's supposed to say when he can't get to them, and put stories together in order and match words that make sense and words that don't. They make him talk to a psychiatrist, who is supposed to help him fill in the white spaces, but he just keeps wanting to talk about the things Kaidan _does_ remember but wishes he didn't.

The Huerta team coordinates his recovery with Alliance Medical, who sends whatever enlisted medic they can spare to help with "occupational therapy," a few days a week. No matter who it is, they project an aura of impatience, even though Kaidan _agrees_ that this is a waste of their time when there's a war raging. They drill him in boot camp maneuvers: how to hold a rifle, how to aim and shoot, how to respond to orders instantaneously. Kaidan knows they're testing him to make sure he's not going to be a liability in the field, get someone else killed. But he still can't stop his hand from shaking, he knows it takes too long to process the commands screamed over his head. That second's hesitation is too late; the slowed reaction time caused by the fog in his mind is unacceptable. Even knowing what they want, he can't give it to them. He used to be able to do these things in his sleep. He keeps trying because he'll shoot himself before being forced to sit out the fight on Earth.

And finally, under carefully controlled observation, he eases into using his biotic abilities again. Dr. Michel second-guesses every move he makes until he starts lashing out accidentally-on purpose and she shuts him down for the day. Every attempt triggers a violent migraine, locking him down in his closet-sized room for the next several hours. The docs are reluctant to give him any more painkillers; he's becoming resistant to the ones he's already on. He suffers through it, knowing that the brass will not give medical clearance to an unstable biotic, especially one who spikes as high as he does.

They downgrade him from intensive care to rehab. He starts hearing arguments between primary care and Alli-Med about whether or not he should be discharged, or moved to the less expensive outpatient clinics in the Wards. Dr. Michel says he's ready to leave; that medically, he is as good as he is going to get and there is nothing more she can do for him. But then she keeps finding reasons to keep him under observation; just one more test, he needs more rest... This time, when Udina comes to see him, he's so happy to have someone to talk to who isn't trying to evaluate him for something that he doesn't even mind the political sleaze factor. Except that Udina _is_ trying to evaluate him for something, isn't he? While the doctors still can't even decide whether or not it's safe to kick him out of this hospital that feels increasingly like a prison, Udina still wants to give him a shiny new job title.

Kaidan tells him he'll have his answer soon. The Councilor leaves, and he shifts away from the door, staring at the dull metallic wall instead.

"What'd Udina want?"

He jumps, spinning around to see Shepard leaning against the wall just inside the door, like it's nothing, like they're enjoying a moment of downtime on the Normandy. His bracelet didn't warn her she was coming, not that he's surprised: Shepard has never been the type to sign in at the front desk. He pulls himself up to a full sitting position and tries not to let on how much the movement hurts. "Shepard," he says softly, wincing at how much exhaustion seeps into his voice. "Thanks for coming."

She nods, shrugging casually, but refusing to meet his eyes. Kaidan clears his throat softly and runs his hand over his face, looking at anything but her. He'd invited her, but now that she's actually _here_, it's nothing but awkward.

"Here, I got you this." Shepard holds up a bottle of black-label, and he smiles, knowing full well it's the only thing in the hospital gift shop that has even a remote chance of interesting anybody over the age of eight.

"Thanks, Shepard. Maybe when I get out of here, we can crack it open and celebrate."

"Why wait?"

He rolls his eyes. "Because I don't want to give them any excuse to hold me here even longer, that's why. You know what they say about alcohol messing up your brain and all."

"Need me to break you out?"

_God yes_, screams the voice inside his brain, pounding at the edges. This place is driving him crazy. "Tempting," he admits, in what he hopes is a calm-sounding voice.

There's no reason to let Shepard know how messed up he actually is, right? Better if it's just like old times. Or at least, as close as the two of them can manage.

"So you're still thinking about the Spectre position."

"It's a big honor... huge responsibility. I just... need to be sure."

"Heh. Least they did you the courtesy of asking. You're too damned cautious, Kaidan."

"Yeah. And you're not nearly cautious enough."

"Mmm. 'Cuz I know you got my back if I do anything _that_ stupid."

He shakes his head, memory crashing at his brain. _Kaidan, go! _"I _don't_, Shepard. You don't let me, not when it really matters. You _died_, and I..."

"Yeah," she says softly, tracing lines over the wrinkles and folds in the hospital sheets, still looking anywhere but at him. "And you almost died, so I guess we're even now."

"How bad was it, really? The doctors won't tell me anything useful."

Her eyes flicker toward him, making contact for just the briefest moment before she looks away again. "It was bad, Kaidan. I was... scared."

"They tell me I got beat up by a girl on Mars. A girl that isn't you, I mean."

"You don't remember?"

"There's a lot of... blank spots, I guess?"

Shepard shifts in her seat, leaning closer to him.

"It was a Cerberus scientist, or so we thought. Turned out to be some kind of cybernetic. Survived a full explosion after Vega shot down her shuttle. Just got up and walked out of the fire like it was nothing."

Her words trigger memories stronger than any of the fleeting images that had come when the doctors and therapists talked to him. Maybe because it's _her_. He can feel the heat of the fire, sees metal skin and bullets that bounce harmlessly away, he can taste the exhaust fumes in the air. He remembers what it was like, running all out, as fast as he could, and closing around nothing but emptiness, his heart hammering in his chest. And he remembers the sudden cold of steel fingers locked around his throat and the crackle of static.

His fingers trace the bruises around his neck. "You took her down, right?"

"Yeah." Shepard pauses for a long moment, until Kaidan is sure she's keeping something from him, but then she shakes her head and smiles uneasily. "She's no threat."

And he trusts her. He smiles back. "Okay. Good." He taps his fingers nervously against the hollow metal guardrail at the side of his bed. "Shepard, I just want to make sure. After Mars, after Horizon, you and me... we're good?"

The words _bleed_, out there in the open, tinged with so much hope and need and desire.

Shepard sighs. One hand tightens around the neck of the whiskey bottle, her other hand tangles itself into his. The heat of her touch sends a thrill through him, and he pulls himself closer: caution be damned. His ribs twinge as he leans down to pull her to him. She smells like sweat and the prepackaged standard-issue hair-and-body soap the Alliance stocks on all its ships. Hospital soap is not that different, maybe they're unintentionally trying to make him feel a little more at home. His fingers brush through her hair, just barely dusting her shoulders. With his other hand, he loosens the whiskey bottle out of her grip and sets it on the table.

"Kaidan, _stop_." Her voice is full of just enough heat to freeze him, and she pulls away.

"Shepard, I... I'm sorry. I didn't... I feel like an idiot."

"I just never know where I stand with you," she demands. "I mean, _God_, Kaidan, one minute you're blaming _me_ personally for everything Cerberus does, and the next..."

"I never meant... Cerberus is _not_ your fault, Shepard. I was... I was wrong. Not about them, but I was wrong about you and... I'm sorry."

"Yeah," she mumbles. And his heart clenches because he knows she still doesn't believe him, and he can't blame her. "Kaidan, are we gonna be able to get past what happened on Horizon?"

"I dunno, Shepard. I guess all I can tell you is that I'm not with anyone, and I... I still care. And that's how we'll get past Horizon."

"Kaidan..."

"Look, I know there's a war on. And maybe you and me'll never happen. Maybe Ilos was it for us, our one shot. But I like having you around, having you in my life. We're good together. And I just needed you to know that. So thanks, for coming by."

She stands up, ready to get going, he's sure, to get back to the fight. He shifts position to watch her walk away, already struggling to readjust to the lonely emptiness of the hospital without her.

But then she turns back, and brushes a gentle kiss over his lips. He sighs, the heat surging through his blood. It feels so damned good that he doesn't want it to ever stop.

"We're good, Kaidan." He smiles, more relaxed now than he has been since he got here. Shepard squeezes his hand. "Take care of yourself. We need you at 100%."

"Sure thing, Commander."


	9. Special Tactics and Reconnaissance

Kaidan is so happy to be wearing something other than pajama bottoms that he doesn't even care that it's his dress blues. He is still a Marine, he wears them with pride, but that doesn't change the fact that they're a giant pain in the ass to have to keep crisp and proper, and only worn for giant pain in the ass meetings he'd rather avoid. At least this pain-in-the-ass meeting is in his honor.

"I won't have to give a speech or anything, will I?" he asks Udina, as he follows the Councilor down the long hallway into the Presidium.

"No, Major Alenko, the speeches are taken care of. You'll just need to look inspiring for the cameras."

Kaidan grins. At least the man's being honest. "The second human in history to ever become a Spectre. What does that mean, Councilor? Will I be _doing_ anything or just... looking inspiring, as you say."

"Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. Nothing you aren't already quite good at. It is why I nominated you."

"But Spectres answer to the Council, _not_ the Alliance."

"Don't worry so much, Major. Shepard managed to be both."

"Shepard managed to _piss off_ both, you mean."

"Another reason why I picked you: you're far more level-headed. We've all got the same enemy now. Providing you with Council resources only increases our chances of winning this war."

"I suppose you're right."

"I assure you, my goal is the same as yours: give Earth a fighting chance."

"There's a goal I can get behind."

Udina smiles thinly. "I'm glad you see things my way."

He shakes Kaidan's hand for the benefit of the observers, and steps up to the podium to give the first of far too many speeches.

Kaidan listens with half an ear as he scans the crowd gathered here to watch the ceremony - the Council, of course, along with scattered aides and attendants. Commander Bailey, representing C-Sec in his official position as diplomat-wrangler, and squirming the entire while. Kaidan meets his gaze briefly, and the other man rolls his eyes. Kaidan knows he'd much rather be down in the Wards knocking skulls together, and he gives the cop an embarrassed shrug. Bailey has a fully functional bullshit detector, and Kaidan respects that. The rest of the bunch seems to be composed solely of ANN reporters, with their cameras hovering like buzzing insects just out of reach. Kaidan straightens his posture and tries his best to look _inspiring_.

The induction process itself is surprisingly short and straightforward - makes sense, given the need to get back to the war. Kaidan answers in the affirmative to a series of questions asserting his willingness and ability to serve the galaxy as a whole rather than the sole interests of any one species, and to accept the great responsibility that comes with the new authority he is being granted. It's not all that different from the oath he took upon joining the Alliance military, and he's happy enough to accept the title and the congratulations of humanity's representatives on the Citadel. He even manages to make it through the post-ceremony press conference without punching anyone in the face, an accomplishment he plans to harass Shepard with the next time he sees her.

Of course, he may be a Spectre, but he still hasn't gotten his medical clearance, and that means as soon as all the fun is over, it's right back to Huerta Memorial Hospital for him. Udina pays a driver to take him there in an unnecessarily large and expensive shuttle. Kaidan begins to wonder if the Alliance is only stalling his release because they don't want to pay the Per Diem to put him in a hotel, and transferring him to active duty on the Citadel means a lot of paperwork. Ironically, _his own_ clearance may be the one thing he is not capable of using his newly-acquired Spectre status to push through.

Dr. Michel congratulates him on the promotion as he kicks around the patient lounge, frowning as he watches his own face on the news screens. "It's not a promotion," he tells her. "Spectre's outside Alliance hierarchy."

The doctor shrugs. "Well, you look good up there anyway. Popcorn?" She shoves the bag at him, and he takes it with a grin.

"You bought _popcorn_?"

"You gave us a reason to celebrate in here, Spectre Alenko. It's not often there's good news on that screen. Why not popcorn? There's some punch at the Nurses' Station too. Tell 'em I said it's okay to let you have some of the good stuff."

"When am I gonna get out of here, Doc?"

"Soon."

"You've been saying that for weeks."

"This time I mean it. I promise, Kaidan. Paperwork's all cleared from my end. Just waiting for the Alliance to stamp all the right forms now."

Two days later, when his bracelet announces the arrival of another visitor, he's still waiting. He paces the length of his room, twitchy now that it's no longer an excruciating challenge to do so. He's grateful, he really is, but the hospital is just damned _boring_ now. He taps his fingers on the ledge that runs under the fake window and tries psyching himself up for what he's sure is going to be another news reporter come to record a message of encouragement for the refugees pouring into the Citadel. They come here looking for Council aid, and the best he can give them is an off-duty Marine who spends his days playing with a datapad in a hospital armchair.

"Good to see you up and about, soldier. Though if you want to take your shirt off again, I won't complain."

"Shepard! If you came to spring me, you're late. I'm getting out soon."

Shepard raises an eyebrow, coming over to stand next to him, her eyes tracking the shooting stars trailing along their predictable path across the artificial viewport. "Yeah? Took you long enough."

"Hey, I almost died."

Shepard snorts. "We let everybody use that as an excuse, there won't be anyone left in the fight."

"Yeah, well if you didn't keep hauling your crew into jobs no sane person would ever take on..."

"You volunteered, if I recall."

Kaidan smiles, running his hand through his still-growing hair. The bandages are gone, but he can feel the rough scars from the surgery. It'll take time for them to fade, and they'll never disappear. "You're right, I did. I can't let you save the galaxy without me."

Shepard jumps up onto the bed, helping herself to the last of the poisonously green Jello he left behind on the tray. "Hey, this isn't bad," she remarks, around the spoon stuffed into her mouth.

"It kind of loses its appeal after the third week."

"Mmm." She twirls the spoon around between her fingers, studying him. "I saw your vid. Spectre Kaidan Alenko. Sure you're up for it?"

"Well, you set the bar pretty high, but yeah – I think I can handle it."

"Of course you can. You're a good soldier, Kaidan. I saw it on Eden Prime, there's something special about you."

"You did not!" Kaidan replies, trying to smother a laugh.

"What?"

"You did not see anything _special_ on Eden Prime."

"I saw you checking out my ass."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah." She sighs, then turns back, suddenly serious. "And I saw the way you took care of me after that Prothean beacon hit. Liara wanted to get inside my head, but you just... stayed."

"Yeah well... I had to make sure I didn't lose you. You know, because of your damn fine ass."

Shepard laughs, grabbing a pillow and chucking it at him.

"_Ow_!" he whines, coming at her to retaliate.

"Someone should tell Udina he picked the wrong candidate. You're wussier than a four-year-old."

"Yeah?" Kaidan asks, rolling over and pinning her beneath him. "And how would you know?"

Shepard stills beneath him, pushing him off and sitting up. "Kaidan..."

His laughter dies immediately. "What's wrong?"

She shakes her head, but he pulls her close to him and holds her. Her breathing is slow and heavy, and when he looks down, he sees the tears in her eyes. "I just can't shake the thought of what's going on back on Earth," she admits. "There was this boy... _young_, probably six years old. I watched him die. He tried to hide from the Reapers, but he couldn't. None of us can. And dammit, Kaidan, he's only one of _billions_."

"Shepard, you can't..."

"But I _have to_! If I don't, who will?"

"Hey," he hugs her tight, brushing away the tears. He waits for her to pull away, but she doesn't. If anything, she grabs him tighter. "I will, okay? You're not in this alone."

After a long moment, she pushes him again and wipes her face clean with her hands. "Goddamn. Anybody sees me losing it like this, they'll have me in a psych eval."

"They're not all bad. I'll give you my notes on the ink blot test."

She snorts. "You can't cheat on the ink blot test, asshole."

"Watch me. Shepard, you're not crazy. Well, not any more than usual. You're allowed to lose it every once in a while. It's only human."

"I still count as human, Alenko?"

"Yeah. If you don't, we're already doomed."


	10. The Future Flashed

"I hear you're getting out of here."

Kaidan turns to the Drell who spends so much of his time tucked into the corner of the lounge. Their physiology is different, but even so, Kaidan can tell the alien is fading. His breathing sounds harsh and ragged, and his speech is slurred, when it comes at all. There is only one way Thane Krios will leave this hospital.

"My clearance came through this morning." He swallows hard, a wave of guilt crashing against the inside of his stomach. There has been so much death in this war, in his life; he's even caused some of it. But it seems different now. He studies Thane and sees an equal: a warrior. He deserves better than to linger through a slow and painful fight against an enemy that cannot be defeated. How can you fight against your own body? Thane's illness is not a problem that can be solved, certainly not with a well-placed shot from the rifle Kaidan sometimes sees the assassin maintaining, with the easy motions of someone who does it without thinking. He hasn't seen the gun for several days, though.

"Do not grieve for me. I have lived a long life. I've asked Kalihira to forgive my sins and guard my path. And I have made peace with my son. It is my time."

"How do you know?" Kaidan demands.

"What?"

"How do you know it's your time?"

"It is not your time, Kaidan Alenko."

"How do you _know_?" he repeats.

Thane draws in a shaky breath, and blinks his large eyes, staring out the fake window for a long time before turning back to Kaidan. "Are you ready to lay down your weapons and give up the fight?"

"No," Kaidan replies immediately. He sighs. "You know how they say your life flashes in front of your eyes when you're about to die?"

"I am intimately familiar with the concept, yes."

Kaidan winces. "Sorry, that was..." he trails off as he picks up on the _look_ Thane is somehow projecting. No apologies. Right. "Anyway, after Mars... the future flashed, for me. After everything I saw in the invasion on Earth, everything I see _here_," he waves his arm toward the halls deeper in the hospital, echoing with the agonized moaning of the injured refugees laid out on cots or sometimes directly on the floor because there is nowhere else for them to go. "The anguish, the families... the _children_. It made me _determined_ to live. I need to do _something_... to save at least a few lives."

"That's how you know."

A sharp, insistent electronic ping interrupts the conversation before Kaidan can figure his response. He frowns, reaching for the source of the sound. It's not the soft chime he's come to expect from his hospital bracelet, but a harsher tone coming from the omnitool he's still getting used to wearing again. He slides his finger over the device and pulls up a flickering holographic message. The vid cuts out almost immediately, leaving only sound, and that's barely getting through. Crackling bursts of static make the words almost impossible to understand, but there's no mistaking the concussive bursts of explosives and the repetitive pulse of automatic weapons-fire.

"That's local: Citadel," Thane says. The Drell has gotten out of the chair, and Kaidan can immediately see by the way he stands, ready to fight, that his reputation as someone to be feared is certainly deserved.

"Yeah."

"Someone's attacking the Citadel?"

Kaidan nods, running through the frequency bands of his omnitool, but he can't get the signal back, not to the Alliance outpost signature the call had been placed from, and not to C-Sec or the diplomatic backchannels of the Presidium either. "Looks that way. They've cut off comms."

"The attackers are Human," Thane observes, his perfect recall allowing him to make sense of the flickers of fast and blurry video Kaidan could not have focused on. "Cerberus." The organization is easy to recognize, with their distinctive armor marked by the sharp angles of a logo that is familiar to anyone with even a hint of military experience. The Illusive Man does make enemies.

Kaidan blows out a frustrated sigh, and stuffs the surge of anger back down to the pit of his stomach. Calming breaths. Focus. It doesn't matter _why_ Cerberus is here, what's important is _stopping them_. He needs a plan. His fingers twitch at his side, reaching for the gun he doesn't carry because he's in a _hospital_. He needs a weapon, and armor, and a plan. One step at a time.

Behind him, Thane is muttering to himself. Or more accurately, to the datapad in his hand. "You get a channel up?" he asks, surprised. His omnitool authorizes him to a level of backdoor clearances the Drell shouldn't be able to match, and _he _can't get through.

"No," Thane replies heatedly. He continues trying though, following Kaidan to his hospital room. The route is depressingly familiar, even winding through the hushed chaos of senior medical staff responding to scattered reports of the station's intrusion while trying not to ignite a panic among the already-jumpy refugees. Thane shoves his way into his own room and returns half a heartbeat later, holding his rifle in a loving grip.

"What are you doing, Thane?"

"I promised Commander Shepard that I would guard your back should Cerberus come to finish what they started," the Drell assures him, assuming a position for covering fire as Kaidan slips into his room and goes for his gear. "Hurry it up, Major. I have one more fight in me, and I'd rather make the most of it."

"You promised what?" Kaidan asks, as he fumbles with the locker he hasn't touched since he was admitted. "I didn't even know you _knew_ Shepard."

"I was with her on the voyage through the Omega 4 relay... The Suicide Mission, as it is often referred to."

"She never said. But she visited you too then, every time she came to see me?"

"She did."

Kaidan smiles, his fingers flying with practiced movements as he pulls his armor over the Alliance-issue off-duty jumpsuit he'd taken to wearing since the Spectre ceremony. It makes him feel somewhat useful again. Or at least like he's prepared for the possibility of being useful. He never thought it would actually _matter_, that wearing something designed to have armor strapped on top of it would buy him an extra few minutes in a fight. Who expects a fight in a hospital on a diplomatic station?

"That sounds like Shepard," he admits, locking his gun into its holster with a satisfying _click_. "She'll do anything for her people."

"And we will always return the favor."

"Damn right."

It's immensely comforting to feel the weight of his armor wrapped protectively around his body again. He loads the thermal clip into his gun by feel, and his heartbeat pounds quickly underneath his ribcage, his body is charged with adrenaline. He can feel the sparks of potential coiled in his brain, surging through his fingertips. His mind settles into the uncanny state of calm that allows him to scan his surroundings for threats and priorities without being distracted by fear or panic at the very serious physical threats that come from having live grenades thrown in his general direction. He crouches into cover behind the admission desk, abandoned by the hospital staff who've retreated to protect the patients who cannot defend themselves.

"Flashbang," Thane says softly, over the private channel hooked into his armor. Kaidan fiddles with his omnitool as the Drell talks, strengthening the feed and locking in their two-way communication. Cerberus won't be able to cut them off unless they take out their own radios with it. "Non-lethal. That is promising."

Kaidan bites his lip, watching the Cerberus assault troopers sweep through the lounge, red light tracking from their guns and sweeping over the furniture. The room is eerily silent. The lights flicker, then go dark, returning with a loud pop as the hospital's emergency generator kicks in. "They don't seem to be expecting resistance," he murmurs. The subvocal mic will amplify his words and relay them to his partner.

"It's a _hospital_," Thane reminds him.

"That's just it. What're they doing here? Attacking the Citadel doesn't make any sense."

The hostile squad moves past his position, and Kaidan breathes a bit easier, until one of the more lightly armored men pauses and turns back, looking directly at him.

"Damn!" He opens fire and cuts down the combat engineer without a second's hesitation. Of _course_ they'd use sensors. He curses himself for not thinking about that immediately.

"You take the right, I've got the left," Thane instructs.

Kaidan nods, reloading his pistol and taking his next shot. The Cerberus trooper drops. It's just like target practice at the shooting range. He falls into the rhythm of war like he'd never been out of it.

"Clear," he breathes. "Next steps?"

"Those commandos are here for _us_, Alenko. Anyone connected to Shepard is at risk. Cerberus goes nowhere without aiming for complete control."

"The Presidium. They'll try for the Council."

"Indeed."

"We have to stop them." Kaidan sprints for the inter-level express elevator just outside the hospital's main entrance. Out here, the backup lighting that had shown bright within the medical facility is nowhere to be found. He moves cautiously, holding his gun in a steady two-handed grip and scanning for possible ambushes. It takes him a long moment to realize that he hears nothing more than the echoes of his own breathing cycling back through his earbuds.

"Thane?"

"I am safe enough. Go. Protect the Council, Spectre. Do your job."

"What about you?"

"I will do my best to help C-Sec manage the situation. I... owe Commander Bailey a great deal."

And he's still terminally ill, he doesn't deserve to be dragged through a firefight. Kaidan nods. "Okay."

"I will direct Security to your location. Keep in contact."

"Yeah. See you on the other side, Thane."

The elevator is still working. That in itself is enough to send relief surging through Kaidan's entire body. He takes another few careful breaths, thinking it through. Prepare for the worst, be ready for a trap... he palms the button that will take him to the Presidium's upper levels, then changes his mind and redirects. The Commons. More options, in case they _are_ waiting for him the way he expects.

The elevator doors slide open, and Kaidan ducks out from behind them, rolling to cover behind a low wall. Cerberus has made quick work of the open walkways and storefronts; the whole place is painted with bulletholes and smoke damage. And empty. Above his head, warning klaxons blare along with a looped recording declaring "civil unrest" in each of the Citadel's Wards in alphabetical order. "For your safety, avoid these areas." Kaidan swallows an ironic laugh and checks his gun again.

His Spectre access gets him in through a back door that Cerberus must not know about. He keeps his senses alert, but encounters no one as he hurries through the emergency-use-only shaft that involves climbing a lot of stairs and scrambling through narrow passageways. The Councilors won't like this, it means getting dirty and uncomfortable. But he imagines they'll like being dead even less.

The shaft dumps him out into one of the small meeting rooms that ring the top of the Council's main chamber. The last time he'd been here, it'd been to accept his nomination as a Spectre. Now, it's time to show that it isn't just a title.

He frowns, crawling forward toward the thick plexiglass window, just in case Cerberus is looking. What if the Council isn't here? It isn't the most logical place to hide.

_But it is the most defensible_, whispers his Marine-training, in Ashley Williams' voice.

Sure enough, when he peeks carefully over the windowsill, it's to see all of the Councilors pacing anxiously around the large room, just below him. Pressed for time, he shatters the window with a few well placed shots - _not bulletproof? Stupid risk!_ - and jumps down.

"Major Alenko," Udina gasps, eyes wide with surprise and unconcealed fear. Kaidan reminds himself that the diplomat isn't a front-line soldier the way he is. He's not used to people coming after him with guns.

"Don't worry. I'll keep you safe. Come on, we've got to get you to a shuttle."

The rest of the Councilors watch him warily, and he scans the room, running options in his head. The maintenance shaft is safer, certainly, but the elevator will get them to the shuttles faster, and speed may mean the difference between life or death. And in either case, they'll be caught in a chokepoint, he's the only one with combat experience and armor, and only a couple of the Councilors have even a handgun. Elevator it is. "Go!" he commands, watching their back as Udina shoves the rest of the Council past the doors Kaidan has locked open.

The human ambassador meets his eyes as Kaidan slips into the elevator and punches the button that allows the doors to slide smoothly shut. The car rumbles and begins to move shortly thereafter. The ride is anything _but _smooth. It stops and starts, shudders and jerk, and even begins to _fall_, for a terrifying few moments. It stabilizes, and starts moving upward again. Kaidan concentrates on breathing and forces himself not to act as twitchy as he feels in front of the people he's supposed to be rescuing.

Udina slams the emergency-stop button as they reach the shuttle pad. Kaidan is moving to force the doors open manually when they hear the heavy jolt of something - _someone_ - landing on the top of the elevator car. Cerberus has caught up to them. No time to think. He wrestles with the doors and manages to separate them just enough to squeeze through. "Go!" he commands, and the Council, to its everlasting credit, actually follows his order. It's enough to recharge him. They've reached the goal. It fills him with confidence and hope for perhaps five seconds before he rounds the corner - eyes still alert for an ambush - to see the shuttle, burning.

Smoke pours from its engine, obscuring the familiar Alliance paint scheme. Fire licks out from behind the panels where electronics reside, crackling and collapsing under the savage assault. Even with the fire extinguisher he could still grab from the elevator, there is no salvaging the vehicle, not quickly enough.

New plan, what now? Where is he supposed to go? "Back to the elevator!" he demands. C-Sec. It's their best option. And he will keep them all safe because it is his _job_, and he sure as hell is not going to just _give up_. "Go!" he screams, when no one moves. "I'll cover you." He turns back to the waiting elevator to do just that, and then he sees her. Gun drawn, aimed steadily at the Council members he is trying to protect.

"Shepard?"

"Shepard's blocking our escape!" Udina snaps. "She's with Cerberus!"

_No_, Kaidan's mental-voice insists. _No, this can't be right_. Uncertainty twists in his stomach. Isn't this what he'd _known_, all along, what he'd feared? He'd tried to fight it because he wanted so badly for it _not _to be true, but...

_"Cerberus goes nowhere without complete control."_

They'd owned her for _years_.

_Trust me, Kaidan. __Please_.

"Everyone just... calm down," he insists. He's the only one that's agitated.

"Kaidan, I'm here for _him_," Shepard demands, nodding toward Udina. Kaidan draws in a deep breath, his gun tracking her movements. Ready to... shoot her? Can he really pull that trigger?

Does he have a choice?

"Would I do this if I wasn't _damn sure_?" Shepard spits, holding his gaze and his attention. _Dangerous, _his training screams, pulsing through his blood. His fingers tighten around the grip of his gun. "Would I?"

_Kaidan, you __know__ me..._

Breathless giggles. The softness of her skin, slick under the artificial rain of her Captain's-Cabin shower. The rhythm of her heart as he traced his fingers along her ribcage to rest between her naked breasts.

And the single-minded determination with which she's thrown herself into the line of fire, to _protect him._

He drops the gun. "I better not regret this, Shepard."

"You won't."

"Udina," he orders, infusing his voice with as much _command _as he can muster. "Step away from the console."

"To hell with this!" the Councilor retorts, pulling a holdout gun from a hidden pocket and throwing the Asari nearest him to the ground.

As soon as the man points his weapon at the unarmed diplomat, Shepard takes the shot. Clean. Right through the heart. Udina falls.

"Get the Council back and cover that door," Shepard orders. Kaidan nods, falling in right behind her. He doesn't regret it at all.


	11. Middle Gray

It feels weird to walk around without any kind of leash. No doctors pulling him back to the hospital, no orders or time limits. Hard to enjoy it though, when the scars of war are all around him. It's unsettling how many dirty looks his Alliance uniform earns him. It's to be expected from the nonhumans, who had reason enough to dislike the human-led Council even before the Cerberus invasion. But the human refugees are just as hostile. Kaidan pushes through the docking bays - more and more of them converted into makeshift camps for as many people as can be stuffed into them - trying not to let the cursing and spitting get to him. So far, no one's come at him with fists - or weapons - but he figures it's only a matter of time.

He'd always figured he served _humanity_, no matter where in the galaxy they are. He sure as hell knows the Reapers will _attack _all of humanity, no matter where they are. But most of these people have no ties to Earth, and all they can see is that Udina's mandatory draft from the colony worlds is ripping families apart and sending countless thousands into a slaughterhouse. The worst part is the sinking certainty that they aren't _wrong_.

The battle against the Reapers isn't one that they can _win_. They can only buy time for this doomsday weapon Liara dug up on Mars, and hope to hell it works as advertised. He knows the odds of surviving down on Earth. He wouldn't play those odds.

His apologies sound like lies pouring from his lips. His head starts to pound, a tempo of guilt and churning anger and the worst kind of uselessness. He stops apologizing and just _walks_, head down, shoving his way toward the Normandy and avoiding the crowds as best he can. It doesn't stop him from seeing too much of the new reality of the Citadel. Barefoot kids scrounging at the marketplace rubbish bins, coming up with nothing but empty wrappers, most of them for dextro-meals that would be useless to them anyway. Women selling themselves to mid-level mercenaries for the promise of half-dose of watered-down medigel to ease the suffering of a wounded family member who more than likely won't survive either way. And posters of the missing - the _probably dead _- everywhere he looks.

It's a relief to be constantly interrupted by his omnitool, beeping and flashing with alerts coming at him from C-Sec, Council messengers, and Alliance High Command. He pages through that last one and frowns. The signature comes from high up, _very _high up. Admiral Hackett. He wonders briefly what he did to gain the attention of the man in charge of the entire Fifth Fleet, then realizes: he became a Spectre, that's what.

Attached to the message is his official reinstatement to active duty, his medical records with all required stamps stamped, and his new posting orders... left conspicuously blank. There's a message attached, an _offer_, to resume command of his biotics squad. Since when does Hackett _ask_? This is the _military_. You go where they tell you. It isn't _optional_.

He's about to accept the offer as a matter of habit, but he holds off. Just for a couple of hours. There's something he needs to do first.

He does ask the Admiral to update him on the locations and status of his "kids" as much as he can without jeopardizing anybody's safety.

And he loiters around the Normandy dock, curling up atop a pile of supply crates waiting to be loaded. Or at least, that is his initial plan, until Liara comes out to supervise loading of said crates, and refuses to leave him standing there. He doesn't protest, even when it means pitching in to help. The job is easy when the two of them are well-versed in moving heavy objects with their minds. He barely breaks a sweat. He revels in the simple pleasure of using his unique abilities without being blinded by an agonizing headache. And no one is currently shooting at him either.

Liara tosses him a bottle of water when they're finished. He drinks it down and tries not to feel guilty about the kids fending for themselves a few docking bays down. That kind of mental path isn't going to help anyone. You can't save everyone. He's told Shepard enough times.

"Hey, Alenko. I'm glad you're all better and everything, but I really don't need all this drama you bring to my life. The Reapers are kind of enough on their own."

The sound of the Normandy pilot's teasing voice is enough to draw out a smile.

"Care to elaborate?" he yells toward the speakers embedded in the cargo hold's roof.

"This on-again, off-again bullshit with Shepard? I mean, who do you think she comes cryin' to when it's 'off'?"

"At least I've got an 'on.' You still dating your Fornax subscription, Joker?"

"Ha-freaking-ha-ha. Seriously though, Kaidan. Don't fuck it up again or I'll kick your ass."

"Yeah..." Kaidan mutters. "Think I'll kick my own ass, actually."

"Don't worry, Kaidan," Liara urges. He's about to ask her what she's talking about, but she simply nods toward the still-open cargo hatch, where Shepard is casually vaulting onto the several-feet-above-the-ground ledge rather than using the ramp like a normal person.

"You _never_ do things the easy way, do you?"

She flashes him an enigmatic smile and doesn't surprise him in the least by not answering the question. "Kaidan, hey. Was wondering where you went."

He raises an eyebrow, leaning against the bulkhead and trying to look like he belongs here. Which he must, because Shepard's hopping up onto a crate shoved into the corner and unwrapping a nutrition bar. No 'What the hell are you doing on my ship?' No 'Get _off _my ship' either.

"Joker called you, didn't he?"

"Yeah. He told me you were pawing at the door like a lost puppy."

"I was not!" Shepard takes a pointed glance at their surroundings, and Kaidan heaves a long-suffering sigh. "Alright, fine! I just... I needed a little time to wrap my head around all this. It's not every day you have an armed standoff with someone you love."

She freezes. This is the woman who will single-handedly save the entire galaxy without flinching, but she is afraid of one tiny word. "Someone you love?" she repeats.

"Yeah, Shepard. That's... not a question anymore, if it ever was. Not on my end anyway."

She shakes her head, her lips barely forming the words. "No," she admits softly. "Not on my end either."

Kaidan nods. He'd allowed himself to hope as much, after the ease with which they'd slipped back into echoes of the old days when she'd come to see him in the hospital. Hearing her say it... helps.

"But still, how it all went down, I just... I don't know."

Shepard crosses her arms over her chest and stares him down, unblinking. Fearless. It's oddly reassuring to see. "Okay," she demands. "You got something to say? Let's have it."

"If I hadn't backed down first... would you have taken me out?"

"Doesn't matter," she replies instantly. "There's a dozen ways it _could've_ gone down."

Kaidan sighs, squeezing his eyes shut for just a brief moment. Trying to wrap his head around all this. It isn't the first time he's been jealous of her ability to just _do_ whatever needs to be done. No hesitation. No regrets. It's also not the first time he's warned her about consequences. And it's certainly not the first time he's prayed to God she _listens_.

"That's the thing, Shepard!" he snaps, all of the tension he's been pretending he doesn't feel bubbling to the surface. "Sometimes, how a thing goes down _does matter_. Knowing that you conducted yourself with integrity. It _matters_."

"You're talking about Udina," Shepard replies calmly. Completely unshaken. _Fuck_.

Kaidan doesn't look at her. "Yeah," he finally agrees, because it's easier that way, but she doesn't believe him. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised. They do know each other too well, even if neither of them will admit it.

"Kaidan, I made the right call. Any soldier would have taken that shot. Even you."

"Okay," he insists. He doesn't want to fight anymore, and she's probably right. What the hell is wrong with him that he can't stop second-guessing her?

"Look, we have to trust each other, right?" Shepard insists. "Because Kaidan, if I can't trust you... _fuck_. If I can't trust you, I don't have anybody."

"Hackett offered me a position," he blurts out. Shepard curls away from him, as though she can somehow protect herself physically from the disappointment of him leaving. He knows she'll get over it. She won't blame him, he knows her well enough to know that. It's probably the _smart_ thing to do.

_If I can't trust you, I don't have anybody. _He grabs her hand before she can walk away.

Her eyes flicker toward his, and he sighs. No more second-guessing. "Hackett offered me a position, but I'd turn it down in a heartbeat for a chance to join you on the Normandy again."

The hope he sees in her eyes is all he needs to know he made the right call. "Hackett knows better than to ask me to give you up."

"So that's a yes?"

"Your gear's already on board."


	12. Keep Going

It's the second time he struggles to adjust to the Normandy where he does and doesn't belong. Some of the crew he recognizes from the SR-1, but only a scattered few. Shepard tells him to go settle in, but it's not like he has anything to unpack. Everything he owns can be carried on his person if it has to be, because it _was_. He literally fled Earth with nothing but the clothing - the _armor_ - on his back. Soldiers learn to pack light anyway, he's just living even lighter than most. It's less of a distraction, but the thing of it is, he could really _use_ a distraction right now. He's beginning to understand why Garrus spends so much of his time calibrating and recalibrating the Normandy's main guns.

He's about to try to see if he can help with calibrating something, but he makes it only halfway down the hall until he stops, pulled in by a smooth metal wall, engraved names. Too many, and it bothers him how many seem only barely familiar. He can't attach faces to all of them. When he tries, he keeps seeing other people: the kids on the Citadel, and the ones who played in a Vancouver park. And his father.

He hasn't seen eye-to-eye with the man since... ever. He was just a stupid kid when he shipped out to BAaT, at the age where _everything_ was a fight, for no reason. And after that... well, after that was after that. He's capable of being civil with his dad, but there are so many things left unsaid. His fault.

_"Recalled to active duty..."_ He stares at the words on his datapad's glowing screen. All that time in the hospital, and he never sent him even a simple note? Just to let him know that he's still thinking about him. All the time.

He hears the footsteps before he hears her voice. She stops just behind him, and he glances out of the corner of his eye to see Shepard staring up at the memorial. Her eyes trace all the names. These are _her people_ up here, and he knows she'll take responsibility for all them, if he lets her. How the fuck can he stop her? He shifts a little bit to give her more space, and she takes it, moving close enough to reach out and touch a few of the letters. ASH. Ashley Williams.

Virmire. Shepard left her to die to save him.

"How do you do it, Shepard?" he asks. "How do you keep it together?"

She chokes out a bitter laugh that _almost_ sounds like broken crying. "You think I keep it together, Alenko?"

"My dad's MIA. Presumed..." He can't finish the sentence. He doesn't need to. He curls his hand into a tight fist and resists the urge to scream. Or cry. He's thirty-five years old, and career military. People _die_. Shepard watched her _whole_ _family_ burn when she was sixteen. What is she going to think of him if he lets this slow him down now?

But she doesn't tell him to pull it together, the way a CO should. She just curls up against his chest and lets him hold her. Letting him be the strong one. His fingers move up and down her back in soft waves. It helps. The warmth of her body pressed against his is something solid to hold on to.

"I'm glad you told me, Kaidan," she says quietly.

"Really?"

She nods, and picks at a thread coming loose at the seam of his jumpsuit. "You wanna know how I keep it together? _This_ is how. I keep good people around me. There's strength in this. Camaraderie. Empathy. If you don't have anybody around you who cares, then what the hell are you fighting for?"

Kaidan is suddenly incredibly aware of how tense she is, coiled like a spring. Her eyes are sunken and red, her skin seems more pale. And he can tell she hasn't been eating enough. You can't survive a war on emergency cardboard-bars. He moves his hand up to her shoulders and starts kneading the tightness out of her muscles. She moans softly and squirms just a little, until he eases off.

"No, don't stop."

He wants to tell her to go eat something. He wants to force her to catch a nap while he fields whatever calls he can in the war room for a couple of hours. But Shepard nuzzles against him and she feels so good in his arms that he can't bring himself to break the moment.

"Okay," he whispers, swearing a silent promise, to her and to himself. He keeps going.

* * *

**Note:** The chapter title comes from the in-game conversation that sparked this chapter, which started with Kaidan observing that "There are people going through hell in a million different ways out there." Which brought me to the Winston Churchill quote: "If you're going through hell, keep going."


	13. Defying Gravity

It's somewhat of a relief to be going up against the Geth again, Kaidan thinks, as he loiters in the background of Shepard's meeting with the Quarian diplomatic envoy. It's a lot simpler, an enemy they understand, and one they are capable of defeating. There are tactics that make sense in this, they have plans, and multiple options. Shit, if he were the Quarians, he might have chosen this war too.

Shepard is having none of it. She rubs her thumb along the bridge of her nose, takes a deep breath, and launches into the most heated tirade that Commander Shepard, Savior of the Citadel and Galaxy's Last Hope, can manage. "I cannot believe you would provoke the Geth, _now_!" she screams at the Admiralty Board, military power behind the entire Migrant Fleet. The Fleet they came out here, to the edges of known space, to ask for _help. _Kaidan winces. Well, she did tell Anderson, and Hackett, and everybody else who keeps sending her into these situations that she's the last person they want as a diplomat.

"The Quarians take care of their own problems, Commander Shepard."

"This is our chance to reclaim the homeworld we have been fighting to save for hundreds of years."

The Admirals speak with overlapping voices, and Shepard shuts them _all_ down. "Do you think the Reapers will stop with you? Just decide to turn around and go back to whatever hole they crawled out of? Even if you win this, it's _one battle_. The larger war's out here. You won't last a month on Rannoch if you don't help us stop the Reapers now!"

"That may be true, but there were... unforeseen circumstances, revealed only after our forces were already committed to the attack." The holographic interface of the war room table shifts color and begins to pulse. "The Geth are being controlled by a signal originating from this dreadnought."

"The Reapers," Shepard sighs.

Kaidan groans. Provoking the Geth was a bad idea from the start. If the synthetics have the support of the Reapers... "Commander, if we don't shut down that Reaper code, the Quarians don't stand a chance."

"I know," Shepard replies forcefully.

The Quarians seem eager to send the Normandy into the center of the storm. So much for solving their own problems. Shepard tells them to be ready while she goes off to fight the entire galaxy's battles on her own. Well, not entirely.

"Commander," Admiral Raan interrupts. "You should know that an old friend of yours, though still technically exiled, has offered to help against the Geth."

Kaidan glances up to see a very familiar figure silhouetted in the doorway for a brief moment before she steps forward. "Tali'Zorah Vas Normandy, reporting for duty."

He smiles. "Tali! It's good to see you again."

"You too, Kaiden," she replies. And after a long pause, adds "I see you're still using the Logic Arrest. How many times have I told you the Nexus is faster?"

Kaiden cradles his omnitool protectively. "The Nexus shields will get me _killed_, Tali. They're _years_ behind!"

"_That's _why you overclock the microframe. I can do it for you if you don't think you can handle it."

Kaidan shakes his head and laughs. _Damn_, he'd forgotten how good it feels to have another gearhead around to banter with. It reminds him of his good days in the academy, when he'd made himself indispensable as a field medic and spent the rest of his time fixing whatever was broken. Calibrating. Yeah, he can totally understand why Garrus does it.

At the time, he was still desperately searching for a sense of purpose and whatever distractions would keep him from continuously agonizing over Jump Zero. Anything to remind the brass that he's more than just a half-insane L2. And now... it just feels good to make things work. Tech is easy. So is first aid. Standard rules and solvable problems.

Unlike this tangled web of politics. Tali stands watching Shepard go at it with the Admiralty Board, her arms crossed over her chest. It's the first time he's ever seen her not immediately jump to the defense of her people.

"Hey, what's this about exile?" he whispers. She's harder to read than most, the enviro-suit making it difficult to gauge body language, but there's no mistaking the way she tenses up. He backs off immediately. "It doesn't matter. Forget I asked."

"It is a long story. But maybe I'll tell you one day."

"Sure," he agrees casually. "If you want to." He hopes she'll read his apology in the way he's making it not a big deal. He understands what it is to keep some things buried in the past, nobody's business. Sometimes people make mistakes, but that shouldn't be what defines you.

"Good to have you back, Tali," Shepard announces, and Kaidan immediately shifts his attention. The strategy session must be over. He and Tali both already have their gear together, and Shepard is understandably reluctant to waste even a few minutes when the clock is continuously ticking. The Reapers are still on Earth, slaughtering millions every day. So he's not surprised when she feeds Joker the provided coordinates almost the second the Quarian envoy is gone, and tells him to make the jump.

Kaidan knew what to expect, but the sight is still distinctly unnerving. For one thing, the Geth ship is _huge, _larger than any Alliance vessel he's ever seen, and it's not even a close competition. And for all its size, it is still obviously dead. The dreadnought is drifting, an empty hulk floating through space, eerily silent.

It looks bad enough as they approach in the Normandy. As they suit up to board through a damaged docking tube, the idea only grows more intimidating. The hulk was built by synthetics, there is nothing to provide comfort to the fragile living beings attempting to gain access. There is no gravity, no oxygen, and as the stuttering laserfire from the Quarian fleet streaks past, visible through the gaps torn from the bulkhead, Shepard hesitates. Just briefly, a pause so short she could certainly justify it as taking a moment to survey the terrain, an attempt to plan her way across. But Kaidan also notices the way Tali moves forward, her nearness a physical reminder of support for her Commander. Kaidan flips to their private channel, cutting out the constant background chatter of the Admirals and the space-jockeys they command, just for a moment.

"Shepard, I can -"

"No," she snaps, all business. "This mission is _my_ command, I take the risk."

He hears the slight tremor in his voice, and he glances out through his visor at the crumpling, scorched, and twisted metal. Nothing but a hardsuit between them and open space. No one to catch her if she falls.

He stares out into the silence, overlaid with memories of fire and shouted command, another order she gave him, and Kaidan Alenko _follows orders_. But if he could go back and do it again, he wouldn't have followed that one.

So why is he going to let her push him away again?

_ Because this isn't the Normandy._

They are not alone out here, for one thing. Joker is waiting for them with the second Normandy, which is whole and safe, not being torn apart by an unknown enemy's ambush. And they've got the entire Quarian fleet behind them.

He still wants to argue, pull rank, protect her - but he swallows it. He wouldn't win the argument anyway, and she'd hate him if he forced it. He nods. "We'll talk you through it."

"How're you doing, Shepard?" Tali asks, after several minutes that drag on like _hours. _Kaidan paces around and keeps shooting nervous looks in the Quarian's direction. She gives him a shrug. He knows she feels just as helpless and hates it just as much. It's _killing _him not to be able to see Shepard. Structural weakness or not, he's cutting a damn window in the next Geth ship they assault.

"I'm fine," Shepard's voice cuts in over their radio. It even sounds like she means it. "Lack of gravity's a little unsettling, though."

Kaidan smiles. Master of understatement, she is. He _hates_ zero-g, avoids it as much as he can. No magnetic boots in the galaxy are strong and heavy enough to make walking through open emptiness with nothing but a tin can to cling through feel like anything but the terrible idea it is.

"It'll get better once you board," Tali promises.

An agonizing several minutes later, he hears Shepard cursing enthusiastically.

"What happened?" he snaps.

"I'm okay. Just looks like nobody else'll be using that docking tube, is all."

Joker reroutes him and Tali to another way in: a hull breach that they can sneak through, like insects burrowing their way through a dead shell. He knows Shepard can handle herself - can and _has, _for years - without him. But he still cannot stop thinking of all the things that can go wrong.

_I think about losing you and I can't stand it._

He'd told her that a lifetime ago, that night before Ilos when they threw away every rule and regulation. It's no less true now. It's an immense relief when they meet up in the still unnaturally quiet halls of the dead flagship. Shepard is leaning casually against the bulkhead, intensely focused on the pressure-locked doors that slide open at Tali's insistence. She looks for all the world like she's been bored_, _waiting for them. But Kaidan doesn't miss the way she moves closer to him as soon as he's crossed the threshold. He takes her hand, giving it as much of a reassuring squeeze as is possible in armor.

Still, it only takes as long as Tali's movement toward the nearby access console for Shepard to shake off every hint of insecurity or fear. "Eyes open, people. If the Geth don't know we're here yet, it's bound to happen soon."

Kaidan checks his gun and covers her back. They rely on Tali to guide them. There's no trace of the wide-eyed and uncertain youngster who fell into their lap on her pilgrimage. She draws the Geth into chokepoints and sweeps them down with Quarian-designed electric weapons built to fry synthetics. It forces Kaidan to realize once again that humans are far from alone when it comes to fighting for survival, or settling a score. It takes him maybe two minutes before he's turning to her before Shepard for plans. The Commander doesn't seem to mind. Tali knows this tech, the layout of this "almost Quarian" ship, and the likely tactics the Geth will use far better than either of the humans could ever hope to. She's the one who can tell, without wasting time, that their initial attempt to shut down the Reaper-origin control signals from the command console will fail, and she's the one who figures out that the they can wipe it out from the drive core instead. She's the one who gets them around the locked down bulkheads by "faking" a fire. He has no idea what she's been doing these past couple of years, but Kaidan damn sure knows he's glad to have Tali as part of the squad again.

The trip through the dreadnought is slow and nerve-wracking. Shepard was right about the Geth wising up to their presence, and this is their home ground. Not to mention, their networked intelligence makes sneaking all but impossible. It's an all-out battle for survival, ducking behind cover, shooting, reloading, running, and doing it all again. After all of that, the pulse of the drive core drilling into his brain and vibrating through every cell in his body still seems too quiet. His heart races against the inside of his chest, until he forces himself to concentrate on calming the nerves that run wild in the aftermath of a fight. A few careful breaths is all it takes to get back into focus. He stays alert to the possibility of an ambush or threat as Shepard follows Tali into the core.

Kaidan knows what a drive core looks like, and the twisted metal contraption in the middle of the room doesn't look like anything he's ever seen before.

"Reaper tech," Tali says softly, and Shepard confirms it.

And then it starts to _move_, sliding open to reveal a Geth, shackled tightly and sparking with electricity. He knows the humanoid shape of the Geth is not strictly necessary, and doesn't translate into human motivations or emotions. But he still fights a heavy shudder of disgust at the sight of something human-looking bound in such a way. He nearly jumps out of his skin when the voice crackles out over his head. "Shepard-Commander, help us."

"Legion!" Shepard exclaims, and she sounds like... like she'd sounded when Tali joined them, or seeing Liara on Mars. She sounds like someone meeting an old friend in trouble.

He frowns, his finger still on the trigger of the gun he'd trained on the Geth as soon as it started _talking_. "You _know_ this thing?"

"Legion helped me destroy the Collectors," Shepard insists, at exactly the moment Kaidan recognizes the badly patched armor grafted to the machine's metal skin. N7 armor. He knows that Shepard is far from the only soldier in the galaxy who wears it, but still, a little shiver runs up his spine.

"A _Geth_ helped you?" he repeats stupefied. He tosses a glance in Tali's direction.

"Legion is... on our side," the Quarian confirms, almost smoothly. Kaidan nods. It's good enough for him. It'll have to be. They're rather short on alternate options.

Unplugging the Geth - _Legion_ - works exactly as advertised. The Reaper code stops transmitting, and through his comm channel Kaidan can hear the Quarian fleet sweeping in to take advantage of the weakened enemy. And there is no mistaking the feel of the ship he's currently standing on coming under attack. He doesn't need windows to recognize heavy bombardment.

"Tali'Zorah to Fleet, hold fire. Repeat: hold fire!"

"What are you doing?" Shepard screams over the broadwave. "We're still on board!"

"You agreed to a counterattack!" Admiral Garrel spits. "If you hold back now, the Heavy Fleet gets wiped out."

"Fuck!" Tali curses. Kaidan blinks. That one doesn't usually translate. She's clearly picked up more than just military tactics from Shepard.

"Focus on the Geth," Shepard reminds them, as Kaidan picks off another one. She's right. They get distracted now and they won't live long enough to worry about the Quarian Fleet battering away the dreadnought's remaining hull integrity. One fight at a time.

Once the attacking waves of synthetic soldiers stop long enough for Kaidan to take a breath, it's only to realize that while he'd been blocking out everything but the world contained in his aim-and-shoot reacting, the Quarians have continued ripping apart the ship. Fire blossoms too damned close for comfort, and the alarms that Tali had triggered earlier scream again - this time for real.

"Without barriers, this ship will be destroyed," Legion interjects less-than helpfully. "We must evacuate."

"Great," Shepard mutters. "Point us in the direction of the escape pods."

"Geth transmit intelligences via remote signal. We do not use escape pods."

Kaidan grinds his teeth. "Any _other_ suggestions?" he asks pointedly.

The Geth, not suprisingly, shows no reaction to his obvious annoyance. "There are fighters docked in the hangar bay. We can pilot a fighter to safety."

Kaidan's pretty sure he doesn't believe in God, but he thanks Him anyway when the path to their makeshift lifeboat is completely lacking in anything shooting at him. It takes all the energy he has to burn to sprint and jump across the crumbling infrastructure of the flagship. They jump into the storage compartment of the claustrophobic fighter just as the dreadnought loses gravity. His heart jumps into his throat and memories flash behind his eyelids, but Shepard holds tight and pulls herself in after him. They're practically sitting on top of one another, and he can meet her eyes through the tinted plexiglass of their visors.

"Next time," he breathes, "You can do things the easy way. Just once, I am _begging _you."

Shepard laughs, and the sound is enough to melt away some of the tension still lighting up his blood. "Come on, Kaidan. Where's the fun in that?"

* * *

**Note:** Much of the initial spark for this chapter owes itself to my good friend **Suilven**, who brought up in conversation some time ago that Shepard really ought to have a more-than-zero reaction to the "nothing between you and open space" reality of boarding the Geth Dreadnought.


	14. This Is An Appropriate Metaphor

Shepard puts him and EDI on working with Admiral Raan to attempt to disentangle the Reaper code and make sense of whatever Geth tech they'd been able to salvage, while she heads down to Rannoch with Tali and Garrus. It's an interesting challenge, one he gets lost in. Or, as lost as he can get while juggling the ongoing war as the ranking officer when Shepard's ashore. Making him her XO had been little more than a side comment, and never confirmed by the higher chain of command, but the Normandy has always been designed to be a Spectre ship so he highly doubts anyone will challenge him.

The truth is, he and Raan both have their minds on other things. Even EDI is only devoting "a portion of her processing power" to the task. Of course, EDI only ever devotes a portion of her processing power to any one thing, and she's still far more capable of "focusing" than any organic, but the distraction of shiny new electronics can only hold him for so long. After the third time he's zoned out listening to the war room's steady stream of comm chatter, he stops trying. "Let me know if you find anything outside the established parameters, EDI."

"Of course, Major Alenko."

He paces back and forth, wearing a hole in the patch of deck just in front of the tactical map still pinging Shepard's location. He watches the blinking dot of light move forward and listens to the transmission Joker keeps open for the far-too-common calls for a quick evac out of a hot zone. Occasionally, he hears Shepard's voice on the other frequency, the one connected to the Quarian Fleet. Which is how he picks up her slightly garbled argument with the Admirals about how to remove the Reaper blocking the target. "No. You need to hit the weak spot or you're just wasting your fire. Without a reliable targeting lock, that Reaper will destroy you. I'll show you where to point. Fire on my signal."

_I'll show you where to point..._

Kaidan can't help it. He grabs the short-range comm that will patch directly in to Shepard's two-way. Everyone else on the feed will hear him, but he doesn't even care. "Shepard, what are you _doing_? The entire _Fleet _can't take down that Reaper. You cannot fight something that big!"

"You ever hear the story about David and Goliath, Kaidan? Ask EDI to look it up for you."

"David and - Shepard, you're _insane_!"

He doesn't get a response. She's turned off her radio. _Fuck_.

He winds up going to bridge and not-talking to Joker about how agonizing it is to wait out their Commander's suicide missions.

Shepard looks like absolute _hell_ when she finally stumbles onto the Normandy, and Kaidan is torn between comforting her and ripping her apart the way he would if any of his trainees tried a stunt like that. He compromises, checking her over and patching up the worst of the burns and abrasions before steering her to the medbay, where he can no longer keep his opinions to himself. "If this wasn't your ship I'd throw in the fucking brig. I do still outrank you."

"Normandy doesn't have a brig," she replies calmly. "If it did, we'd both be in trouble wouldn't we?"

"This isn't funny."

"Didn't you say something about not second-guessing me anymore? I distinctly remember hearing you say something like that."

"Come on, this is different and you know it! You went after a goddamn Reaper! By yourself! On _foot!_ What the hell am I supposed to think? Honestly, Shepard... no matter what they say in the vids, you're not immortal! I _can't_... Fuck, for all the times you've called out someone else for taking _useless _risks, throwing their lives away..."

"If I hadn't painted that target, the entire Quarian fleet could've been annihilated and you know it! Man up, Kaidan! This is _war_. It isn't easy, and it isn't _safe_. And if you're not ready to take a damn risk then you don't belong on my ship! I'll call Hackett right now and tell him to take you back."

"Shepard..."

"You've still never lost anybody under your command to hostile action, right?"

"Right," Kaidan admits softly. He'd never have imagined anyone could make that perfect record sound like something _bad_.

"I have," Shepard demands. "More times than I want to count, but I count them _all_. Every name. Every _person_. All of them. I know how it feels and you don't, so don't you _dare_ tell me I don't have the _right_ to take a risk instead of hiding behind some fucking shield so someone else can die instead!"

The pain in her voice punches through all of his anger, and he heaves a deep sigh, collapsing into the chair next to the bed where she sits curled up and waiting for Dr. Chakwas to confirm that she's as fine as she insists she is. "I'm sorry," he murmurs.

"I know." She flashes him a weak smile. "And hey... I did it, right?"

Kaidan takes her in his arms and gives her a gentle kiss. "I never doubted it," he whispers.

"Liar."


	15. Vas Normandy

The night the Quarians win their war against the Geth and reclaim their world, Shepard is still down on the planet helping to kickstart the rebuilding efforts, and Kaidan finds Tali attempting to play cards with Lieutenant Vega. He is no expert at Skyllian Five, but he knows enough to know she's getting _destroyed_. Apparently, she hasn't learned _everything_ she needs to survive on a military vessel yet. Maybe Quarians don't play cards.

"Deal me in," he orders.

"Aye, aye, Major," James drawls, throwing him a half-assed salute.

"I am still a superior officer, you know."

Vega, not intimidated in the least, just flashes him an obnoxious smirk. "Don't get your panties in a twist. I'll make it look good for the ANN cameras and the homecoming parade."

Kaidan rolls his eyes and picks up his cards. By the middle of his second mug of Citadel-bought watery beer, Tali has at least learned when to fold.

"I'm out," James announces, finishing off his own mug. "Back to work. Gotta make sure Esteban hasn't completely wrecked things downstairs."

Kaidan snorts. "Cortez is not the one I'd worry about."

"Yeah, yeah... watch what happens the day I stop paying attention to the equipment. I get my job done. _Sir_."

"Settle down, Vega. I wasn't questioning your competence."

"Damn right you weren't."

He sweeps out of the room, leaving a void of sudden silence. It's times like this when Kaidan agrees with Tali about the Normandy being far more quiet than any ship has a right to be. He sets his cards down and glances across the table. "I don't suppose there's any point in continuing to pretend we know what we're doing."

"I suppose not," Tali agrees, though she sounds disappointed.

"I'm surprised to see you on the Normandy," Kaidan admits. "When you went down to Rannoch, I guess I kind of figured you'd be staying... The homeworld. That's a big deal. Like a story coming to life."

Tali nods slowly, and Kaidan notices her gloved fingers slipping into one of the many pockets of her suit, the way it has been all night. "It was beautiful, Kaidan. I want you to see it."

"I'd like that."

"I know. But Shepard's right. The Quarians cannot reclaim our world, _really_ claim it, until the Reapers are gone. I can't walk away from this fight. Plus, I already have a home."

"Tali'Zorah Vas Normandy."

"Tali'Zorah Vas Normandy," she confirms.

"I get that," Kaidan replies. "Hell, I couldn't stay away either." He sighs, draining the last of his beer. "I'm glad you're back, anyway."

"It's because of the lounge," Tali says, after a long pause. "How could I resist?"

Kaidan snorts, holding up his empty glass. "Cheers to the Normandy. May it ever provide us with mediocre beer."

"Keelah Selai." Tali toasts with the glass James left behind.

"We have _got _to get you something to drink," Kaidan tells her. "Something _real_. I mean... nutrient paste?"

Tali shrugs. "Better than dying."

"Debatable. We've got to be heading back to the Citadel sometime soon. You can pick up something decent there, right?"

"Debatable," she repeats instantly, and Kaidan smiles. He starts picking up the cards and shuffling them idly.

"Tali, are you okay?"

"Why does everybody keep asking me that? What's the answer you're looking for?"

"Who says I'm looking for an answer? Tell me the truth."

"No," she replies flatly. Kaidan raises an eyebrow.

"No, you won't tell me the truth?"

"No, I'm not okay. Are you?"

He exhales slowly, turning the question over in his mind._ Is he okay?_ How can he be, when Earth is burning? When the Reapers are destroying everything. Yet it seems callous to complain when he is relatively safe and comfortable, with good friends, and the woman he loves. Even the time to play cards and drink a cold beer. Which answer is the more respectful, the right one? _Who says I'm looking for an answer? _"I don't know," he finally admits.

Tali nods. "I grew up hearing my father tell stories about the homeworld. He was going to build me a house..." The modulator tries to smooth out the hitch in her voice, but Kaidan hears it anyway, or _feels _it. He understands it, anyway. "I thought it was what I wanted, you know? But we lost _so much_ to get here."

"And we're going to lose even more," Kaidan murmurs, the words barely passing over his lips.

Tali leans back against the soft conforming fabric of the chair. "You'd think we'd be used to it by now. You know they call us the Suicide Squad on all the vids? I never signed up for that."

"None of us did," he reminds her.

"You really think this is possible? That we're gonna survive this war? Defeat the Reapers? The Protheans couldn't do it 50,000 years ago. Nobody before them even..."

Kaidan silences her with a gentle touch, his hand atop her "I dunno. I know I'm sure as hell going to try."

"You sound like Shepard."

"Good. Maybe you'll believe me then." He fiddles with his omnitool, unclasping it from his arm and sliding it across the table.

"What are you doing?"

"Go ahead. Overclock the microframe."

"Seriously?"

"Why not?"

He can practically feel her giddy excitement as she gets started. He stands up, intending to leave her to it while he goes to the war room to nag Shepard about getting back.

"Hey, Kaidan." He turns back, sure he can feel Tali's eyes burning through him despite the suit's darkened visor. "Thanks for listening to me. Nobody back on the Fleet ever did."

He smiles, and mentally slides his answer to the earlier question from 'I don't know' to 'Yes.'

"Any time, Tali."


	16. Sanity Check

**Note:** A reminder that this story is rated M. There is pure sex toward the end of this chapter. Skip it if it makes you uncomfortable. You won't miss any plot.

* * *

He was right about making a stop at the Citadel in the near future. It's their very next port of call after Rannoch. The crew of the Normandy takes advantage of the opportunity for even a brief shore leave, keenly aware that every chance they get might be their last. Shepard is aware of it too, and she _orders_ everyone to take a break, accepting no excuses from those few reluctant holdouts. Kaidan makes up a rotating schedule to ensure the Normandy is always manned by a skeleton crew enough to take care of an emergency, then sets out on his own. He heads for the Presidium, equally awed and disgusted by the ease with which the galaxy's most wealthy and powerful seem to ignore the ongoing suffering all around them. Yet he understands it, too. He _needs_ it - they all do. A moment to close their eyes and re-center, to remember what they're fighting for.

He stops briefly at the Spectre office, ignoring the firing range because he's shot at enough damn things lately that he doesn't need to keep doing it. Besides, he doesn't think he'll be trading in his comfortable Alliance-issue pistol anytime soon. His gun has seen him through over a decade of service and he trusts it. He flips through his messages, pitches in what little assistance and intel he can ; he marks a few things to bring to Shepard's attention later, or Hackett's. And then he forces himself to shut down the console and head out into the Commons, to lose himself in the crowd. He hops onto the balcony at the edge of the Presidium courtyard and just watches the people going about their lives. If he squints, the carefully cultivated pool below the fountain installed in the center can _almost_ remind him of sitting at home, watching the sun set over the bay. He has the connections to get almost anything he wants on this station, but he waits for Shepard outside a completely average Grill & Bar. Because if this really is his last chance... he wants a cheesesteak and a good beer, dammit.

He slides into one of the balcony tables but continuously denies the VI asking if we like to place an order. Just when he's about to give up, as the mechanical voice informs him with increasing urgency that the provided seating is for patrons of the restaurant only, Shepard slides into the chair across from him, a smile on her face. "You sent me an e-mail? Seriously?"

He shrugs. "Half the time I feel like it's the only damn way to make sure to make sure you actually get a message."

"I make time for my crew, Kaidan. Any time you need to talk."

"I know, Shepard. I know." He spins his finger in lazy circles across the smooth surface of the table. "It's just... I need this, you know. Just... an hour, off of the Normandy, away from the war. I need a... sanity check."

"Yeah, like I told EDI, if you're looking for sanity, I'm probably not the best role model."

She's joking, but he can _see_ the exhaustion starting to get to her. Her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes, and those same eyes are bloodshot and shadowed by blueish dark circles that no amount of makeup can completely cover. "I'm worried about you," he admits. "If I don't take enough time, for the moments like this, then I _know_ you need them."

"What, you think I can't take care of myself?"

"I think you shouldn't have to," he says softly. "I want... I want to be allowed to take care of you, to care _about _you. I mean, hell, I promised I wouldn't second-guess you anymore, but that doesn't stop me from second-guessing _myself_, and -"

"Kaidan," Shepard interjects sharply. He is suddenly aware of how incredibly _close_ she is. She rests her hands over his and leans over the table to kiss him. Her lips are _hot_, they send a spasm of fire through his body that settles somewhere between his belly and his groin. His tongue darts out to taste them, and he inhales sharply, breathing her in until she pulls away, leaving him squirming.

"That... is _so _not fair."

She smiles slyly. "No more second-guessing, right? I think I've made it pretty damned clear what I want."

"Thank God," he breathes. "That makes me _so _happy. And you know... there are benefits to that happiness."

"Are there?"

"Oh yeah, absolutely. But more on that later."

"_Later_? Get your ass out of that chair, Major. We need to get back to the Normandy ASAP."

He laughs, grabbing her hand and refusing to let her up from the table. "No way, Shepard. I am going to make sure you eat a decent meal."

"_Really?_"

"Really. Even..." Her fingers trace along the seam of his jumpsuit, up his inner thigh, and he squirms again, shifting away from her touch. _God_, he wants her _so bad._ "Even if it kills me," he insists.

Shepard settles back into her chair, and he notices in a way he hasn't in a _very _long time just how closely her uniform clings to her curves, perfectly highlighting her breasts.

"I think I'm hurt that you'd choose beer over me," she pouts.

He forces himself to look at her face.

"That mean you don't want any?"

"Any..."

"_Beer_," he says forcefully. "Do you want a beer?"

She laughs again, her fingers still laced in his. "Sure. And after I've had all my dinner like a good girl, you're coming up to my cabin so we can both have dessert. That's an order."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

They may set a new record for the fastest time two humans have finished a meal, but Shepard does finish hers, and Kaidan quickly swipes his finger across the datascreen embedded in the table, charging the bill to his Spectre account. He'll come up with an excuse for it later, when he's not so... preoccupied. The cab ride back to the docking bay is sheer agony, and when they get onto the still-nearly-empty Normandy, Kaidan swears the elevator moves slower than it ever has before. Shepard has already started slipping out of her clothes before the door to her cabin slides open. She throws her shirt across the room to land in a messy heap on the floor in the corner, leaving her in only a lacy black bra that he is absolutely certain is _not _regulation. She kicks off her pants while he stands there dumbfounded, until she turns around and lifts an eyebrow.

"What's the matter, Kaidan?" she teases, her gaze slipping down to the absolutely obvious goings-on in his pants for just long enough to make him _completely_ uncomfortable. "Forget how it works?"

He shakes his head, licking his lips until he remembers how words work. "No. I um... no."

Shepard takes his hand and leads him to the bed. Her fingers move swiftly over the relevant buttons and clasps of his outfit. "Good," she whispers, nibbling at his ear. He moans softly and pulls the rest of his clothes off as fast as he can. Shepard pins him down with her body, and her lips press down on his. His hands trace her smooth, sweat-slicked skin, brushing over the familiar scars that make her seem infinitely more real and alive. He pushes his tongue into her mouth and shifts slightly as her leg brushes against the inside of his, lighting up a surge of heat in a straight line through his stomach and heart and brain, blocking out all sense and logical thought. His heartbeat races beneath the touch of her hand pressed against his chest, and he struggles to breathe, gasping for air. With her other hand, Shepard reaches expertly between his legs, stroking until he knows for a fact that she is _trying_ to drive him insane. Just when he is _certain_ he is about to lose control, she guides him into her. She pushes her hips down on top of his, grinding fast and heavy against his body. The sound of her panting breaths in his ears roars like a hurricane. When he does release, Shepard shudders in his arms and he hugs her close to him. She rests her head against his chest and he holds her, as their heart rate slows in tandem.

"Damn," she breathes. "You've still got it, Alenko."

"Yeah?" he whispers, combing his fingers through her tangled hair. "Worth the wait, huh?"

"Hell yeah. But I swear to God I'll shoot you if it takes us another three years to do that again."

"Fair enough," he concedes, leaning down to steal another gentle kiss.


	17. The Ruthless Calculus of War

Kaidan smiles as he hears the soft moaning sounds Shepard makes as she tosses around in her - admittedly really, _really_ comfortable - bed. "I know you're awake."

"No, I'm not."

"Okay."

He stays where he has been for the last few hours, perched on the edge of her desk staring at the bright colored lights cutting through streams of bubbles. Here and there, fish dart and snap, or drift lazily along. "You have a fish tank," he comments, as though that's news to her.

Shepard yawns, pulling a shirt over her head before joining him.

"Yeah. Cerberus. They like to distract you with stuff like that. Fish tanks and leather seats." She shrugs. "Chakwas told me I shouldn't feel bad about it. I took their money and ran, and now I'm handing their asses to them with their own damn tech."

"Wonder if the fish tank will become standard-issue Alliance?"

Shepard snorts. "You kidding? They can't even adequately stock the mess."

"Yeah. Still... be careful, Commander. Marines'll start to think you're going soft."

"Mmm. Then I'll just have to correct them, won't I?"

"Maybe," he teases. She socks him less-than-gently in the arm, and he has the good sense to look wounded. He's pretty sure he isn't fooling her though.

"How long was I out?"

"Few hours. I figured you could use the rest."

"I don't need you babysitting me, Kaidan. I have to - what if something happened?"

He takes her gently in his arms. She doesn't fight him, which in itself is a worrying sign. A few hours sleep is more than she'd likely have gotten without him standing guard, but it isn't enough by a long shot. "Then EDI would have told me about it," he insists. "And I'd have woken you. Not everything is on you, Shepard. You gotta let your crew take some of the weight. Nobody fights alone, remember?"

It's one of the first things they learn in Basic. Shepard smiles, but her eyes are still haunted. He'd watched her thrashing around in that bed much more than he'd have liked. He highly doubts her dreams were the good kind.

She pushes past him and slides her finger over the touchscreen interface of the terminal he's sitting next to. Her shoulders sag and she begins to mumble under her breath as she reads the unending list of reports and requests for aid. Kaidan watches helplessly as she gauges locations, distance, fuel levels, casualty numbers, mission priority... they will not be able to get to everyone, not in time, and they both know it. But neither of them will say it out loud.

"The Asari ambassador thinks there's an artifact on Thessia that can complete the Crucible," she says softly, her eyes darting up to meet his.

He frowns, wondering what she isn't saying. "That's good news, isn't it?" he asks cautiously.

She nods. "If she's right, of course it is. It's our only chance of saving Earth. But Kaidan, I've got _civilians_ requesting evac out of three different hot zones. We might be the only ones who can respond to their call."

"Shepard -"

"Don't tell me I'm wrong! The Alliance Fleet is barely holding Sol, and nobody else will risk leaving the Crucible unprotected. Or else they're bogged down fighting for survival on Palaven, or Rannoch, or Tuchanka... And the Reapers are already moving for Thessia. If we wait, we may miss our shot entirely. I can't... _fuck_, Kaidan! Tali's right. There are billions of lives riding on me, and I can't make this call! No matter what I do, worlds are burning." She's so angry she's shaking, and she struggles and lashes out at him when he attempts to comfort her.

"That's not your _fault_," he insists. "Shepard, you are doing _everything_ you can. More than anybody has a right to ask."

"I just don't know what I should do anymore." She squeezes her eyes shut before the tears that are obviously threatening can fall. "I just keep thinking about how if the Alliance had done the _smart_ thing and ranked by priority, I would've died on Mindoir."

"Anderson did the right thing," Kaidan whispers, resting his palm against her cheek. Is it just his imagination, or does her skin feel warmer than it should? She's running herself ragged. The Quarians aren't the only ones in the galaxy with an immune system, and Shepard is stressing hers to the breaking point. "We're gonna do the right thing too."

"What if - "

"_No_," he tells her forcefully. "I know you, Shepard. No matter what decisions you've had to make in the past, if you ignore those calls for help you will never be able to live with yourself. And I won't be able to live with myself if I let you. Thessia is well-defended. The Asari are far stronger than we are, they can hold out for a little longer."

"The Turians couldn't."

"The Turians _did. _They held the line until you bought them Krogan support, and they're holding it now. I'm feeding Joker the coordinates for those colonies."

"Kaidan -"

He shakes his head. "Major Alenko. It's my call now. Just this once. What you say is 'yes, sir.'"

Shepard shoots him a stubborn glare, and he's almost certain she's not gonna go for it, but she finally nods, and lets him hug her close while she gathers a breath. "Thank you," she whispers.


	18. Sometimes You Just Really Need a Win

The gentle pinkish-orange light of the rising sun over rippling fields of grain is entirely too idyllic. Kaidan chews on his lower lip and clings to his gun, scanning for any sign of life in the white-washed prefabs barely visible in the distance. A nagging uncertainly claws at his stomach. This reminds him too much of Horizon, or Eden Prime. Or Mindoir. He throws Shepard a glance out of the corner of his eye and notices the familiar look of steely determination set on her face. It reminds him about as well as anything can of the reality of these seemingly-peaceful settlements out on the edge of nothing: they are teetering toward annihilation, and still humanity's best hope.

The people out here knew the risks when they signed on to board those colony ships, but that was decades ago. Children have been born and grown up here, just like she did. If things had gone the way they were supposed to, maybe she would just be another one of these farmers with a bunch of her own kids running around underfoot. He immediately shuts down that line of thought before it goes anywhere. Nobody's making babies with Commander Shepard. Kaidan keeps his eyes open for threats - or survivors - instead of looking at her. At least until he's certain he's got his thoughts under control and that he isn't blushing or doing anything else that's going to give away his entirely inappropriate musings. Goddamn, maybe there's something to the fraternization regs after all.

"What do you think?" he finally asks. "They likely to be holed up somewhere? You told me once you learned how to hold a gun when you were seven."

"We shot _pyjacks_," she replies softly. "Or varren, sometimes. Not husks."

Kaidan nods slowly, as he remembers the paralyzing depression that had seized him the first time he'd been forced to use his biotic abilities against a live target. After he'd finished vomiting up everything in his stomach, that is. He'd sworn he'd never do it again, not after Vyrnnus. A lot of promises are broken on the battlefield. Now, he never even hesitates. Shepard isn't the only one who wonders what this war is doing to them.

The thought stabs at his brain and tightens like cold fingers around his heart, until he digs into his temples with hard pressure from his knuckles, hoping to massage away the oncoming headache before it can really fire up. Not that this kind of wishful thinking has ever worked for him before.

He acknowledges Shepard's comment and trying to pretend he doesn't hear the long-buried pain laid bare in the way her voice wavers. Or maybe trying to pretend that it's not his fault she's picking at those old scabs. He shouldn't have brought it up. Shepard doesn't talk about her past, he _knows _that. What does he gain by reminding her of the colony that couldn't have ever unloaded enough bullets to stop a Batarian raid? He knows she'd have stonewalled anyone but him, but despite that, somehow he's _really_ not smart enough to just leave it the hell alone?

"C'mon, Kaidan." She leads him through the empty packed-dirt streets seemingly without needing to see them. She doesn't check her NavPoint either. He _remembers_, from Horizon and Eden Prime and a couple of decades full of missions like these, that human colonies start with the same basic layout, built for maximum efficiency. Even if he'd kept his mouth shut, Shepard was always going to run into the ghosts of her childhood here. He lets a silent prayer repeat in his mind: that this time, in this place, they can still create a better ending.

"Commander, I'm reading movement about a klick northeast of your current position," Cortez announces over their comms. "Maybe a dozen people. EDI confirms the life signs are consistent with human normals."

"Thanks, Lieutenant," Shepard replies, scanning through her omnitool until she locks on to the same frequency.

"You pickin' up a beacon?" Kaidan asks.

"Yeah. Standard SOS. Go in slow. Don't spook 'em, but be ready just in case this isn't what we expect."

"Sure thing, Commander," he murmurs. He wonders what exactly it is that they are expecting. He _wants_ to find survivors, the kids and families who should be running through these streets, but by now these types of distress calls are little more than too-familiar bait. He sees in the way Shepard moves, slow and suspicious, that she won't let herself hope for the best either. "I'm not scanning any tech more advanced than an old-model omnitool. Couple of power generators. Certainly no Reaper-tech."

He can't help it; despite knowing better, a surge of hope bubbles up in him. He keeps his eyes and ears open as Shepard advances on the marked location. The building is unnaturally aged in the way of cheap colony construction exposed to the raw elements. Four walls and a roof, flat and undistinguished, interchangeable with thousands of others on dozens of worlds. There is nothing to easily indicate its function: no painted signs or decorations, no flowers planted in neat rows outside; nothing but the tiny generator, whirring away in a shadowed corner.

He's not the only one who's jittery and tense; keyed up and ready for the worst. Shepard kicks down the door and squeezes the trigger of the Avenger held tight in her grip, reacting to the movement at the edge of their peripheral vision, ducking into the nearest available cover.

Kaidan's heartbeat rings loud in his ears as he releases a trickle of biotic energy, the first step toward releasing that potential in a directed manner. The effort blows up the headache that had been threatening to ignite for hours, but he grinds his teeth and pushes the pain to the back of his awareness. He can't ignore it, not completely, but he doesn't have time to deal with it now. He's got more pressing concerns; his unreliable implant can just sit down and wait its fucking turn. He _can't_ lose control, because Shepard's already responding to shots no one has fired. She just released a semi-automatic rifle into a room full of _civilians_, and if he follows that lead and lashes out the way his body screams at him to do, there may not be any salvaging this mission.

"Shepard, _stop_!" he orders. His voice sounds louder than he'd expected. But she responds immediately to a shouted command in a way that she probably wouldn't have otherwise.

She stares at him, uncomprehending, for a long moment, then draws in a shaky breath and lowers her gun. A baby breaks into a wailing squall. The wall is peppered with a line of scorched punctures; the spray from her rifle. "I'm..." She takes another breath and shakes her head.

He squeezes his eyes shut and counts to two before opening them again. "It's okay." He forces his voice to stay calm, and patient. "You didn't hit anything."

_Shepard_ didn't hit anything. Shepard's making mistakes raw recruits learn not to make their first week in. Exactly how many nights has she gone without sleeping? How many meals has she skipped? He'd thought he was keeping a better eye on that. But when he forces himself to admit the truth, he's ignoring his own needs just as much. They're only human. If they're not careful, this war will kill them before the Reapers do.

He shakes his head again to clear the thought, and the pulsing spikes of pain scream along the pathways of his brain until his eyes are watering. He wipes the tears away and realizes that he's sweating. He _forces_ himself to calm down, takes another breath, and clears his throat. "I'm Major Kaidan Alenko, Alliance Navy. We're... here to rescue you?" Idiot. Could you make it sound any _more_ like a question?

At least nobody's shooting anymore.

The baby stops crying, and the woman holding it - _her_ - he can see a very tiny human wrapped in a pink blanket, steps forward. She looks at him warily, cradling the infant. "You're not Cerberus."

Kaidan throws a glance toward Shepard, and she frowns. "No," he replies. "Are they - ?"

"They _took_ people!" A gruff-sounding male voice responds, and Kaidan tracks its source to a heavyset middle-aged man in greasy coveralls slowly climbing out from behind a large crate lodged against the wall. "An' when we didn't want to go they started _shooting_. Most people... we didn't want to die. They went with them. It was either that or the Reapers. It's only my family left."

He shakes his head, and draws in a deep sigh. As he talks, more of his family slowly crawls out from behind the wall partitions and storage crates loaded into the room. They're mostly kids, the oldest are maybe the age of Kaidan's new recruits: eighteen, maybe twenty. But they stare at him with fierce determination and he knows they shouldn't be underestimated. He does a quick count. Ten, including the baby. Ten people. So few, but more than he'd allowed himself to hope for. One would be enough, wouldn't it?

_I would've died on Mindoir_, Shepard told him. Or Akuze. Sometimes one is enough. You never know.

"We've all seen the vids," the man continues quietly. "We know they're comin.' But I've worked this land for decades, ever since leavin' Earth. It's _mine_ now, and I figgered I'm gonna die on it."

"Nobody else is going to die here," Shepard demands. The farmer stares her down, unblinking, and Kaidan finds himself impressed. It's not an easy task holding your own in a staring contest against Commander Shepard.

The man blinks first, but he nods, taking in another careful breath. "Didn't think anybody'd come," he admits.

Kaidan doesn't miss the look Shepard shoots his way. "I didn't either," she replies softly. Kaidan barely hears it. He wonders if the civilians do. Probably not. _Hopefully_ not.

"Cortez, we need a pickup," he declares via radio. "We've got civilians looking for a ride."

"Copy that."

The Normandy swoops in to land in one of the open fields nearby. There is no protest. Everyone knows the crops here won't make it through the growing season, and if they do, no one will be around to care. It's only now that Kaidan begins to make out the bodies. Most are civilians, shot cleanly and left where they fell, but scattered among them are a surprising number of Cerberus troops, armor burned and blackened.

"You shot them?" he asks aloud.

He doesn't expect an answer, but the farmer turns back, still herding his family ahead. "I know how to hold a gun, Major. Did my time in the First Contact War. Long time ago. Lifetime ago. But some things never leave you."

Kaidan nods, his eyes sweeping over the dead.

He exhales fiercely as they load up the Normandy, releasing the breath it feels like he's been holding since they landed. The sense of relief - pure, utter elation - as he supervises the family guiding each other onto the ship with quiet whispers, is overwhelming in the best possible way. It washes over him and pumps through his blood, filling him with more energy than the full night's sleep he hasn't gotten since this war began, or the ceaseless pots of coffee he swallows trying to make up for that. One family doesn't make up for the hundreds Cerberus has killed or stolen. But the smile on Shepard's face is enough to prove that one family is enough.

He squeezes her hand as they sit in the corner of the shuttle bay where the colonists are strapping in, readying for Joker to punch the ship through the relay to drop them quickly at the Citadel. They leave the system, and _still_, nothing is shooting at them. "Hey," he whispers. "I think we just did things the easy way."

Shepard glances up at him with a look of pure astonishment, and begins to stammer out a protest, but stops herself. And then she laughs. "We _did_," she agrees, amazed. "And you know what, Kaidan? It feels damn good."


	19. Vendetta

Kaidan finds Shepard running numbers in the shuttle, her brow furrowed in concentration as she tries to make sense of the datapad on her lap. He slides in next to her and hands her a dry-ration packet, which she accepts without a word. He isn't satisfied until she actually rips it open and starts chewing. Now that they're off the Citadel, he knows she's back to agonizing over the calculus. The worrying truth of it is: so is he.

News of Thessia's fall has already hit the Citadel. He refuses to believe the world is already a lost cause, because if it is, then so is Earth. But there are more critical concerns. Trying to frame things positively won't change the fact that the Reapers _are_ there in force, and though the Normandy's stealth drives can get them in-system, their mission to retrieve the Councilor's artifact has turned, to use Joker's word, "dicey." Communications are off the grid. There is no way to know what is going on down on the planet, how many are still alive, whether the temple they need to get to is even still standing, or accessible if it is.

"We have to try," Shepard murmurs, more to herself than to him, but he responds anyway.

"I know," he replies, more to himself than to her.

Liara sits across from them, silent and more agitated than Kaidan has ever seen her. She drums her fingers loosely on her knee and hums fragments of unfamiliar melodies and refuses to look at either of them. She'd insisted on coming along because Thessia is her world, and Shepard couldn't deny her, but Kaidan wonders if she'll be able to hold it together. He looks at her and has his doubts. Shepard frowns, tries to pretend she's ignoring their Asari teammate, trying to give Liara space that is impossible to find in the cramped shuttle.

"We're going in hot, Commander," Cortez warns them. When _aren't_ they?

Kaidan cracks his knuckles and tells himself they've fought down Reapers before and this is no different. He reminds himself that when this is done they'll have what they need to finish the Crucible and save Earth.

"What if we're already too late?" Liara asks softly, craning for a better view of the images flashing on the shuttle's screen. "My people are dying down there."

"I know it's hard, but you gotta block it out, Liara," Shepard insists. It sounds harsh to Kaidan, but he also knows that it's the only thing that's kept Shepard alive and fighting. It's the only reason she stands any chance at all of winning this war.

Liara shakes her head, her eyes still locked on the video of the Reapers closing in, scorching cities. The shuttle is already shaking as Cortez curses softly, juking them through the enemy's firing lines. "I _can't_ be that callous."

"Is that what you think we are?"

"Kaidan," Shepard interjects. With anybody else he might have called it _snapping_, but he's heard her when she really loses her carefully cultivated composure and she's not there yet. But he can still hear the tremor in her voice, knows that she's on the edge and he's making it worse. But he can't keep it bottled any more.

"No!" he shouts. "How dare you judge me, Liara? Judge _us_? Fuck, you think we left Earth because we _wanted _to? Because we're _callous_? The only reason Thessia stands a goddamn chance is because of our _callousness_."

"I... didn't mean it that way," Liara whispers. Some part of his rational mind is aware that his words have hurt her, that her voice wavers and she won't look at him and it's like she's regressed back to the shy young scientist who could barely string two words together when he first met her. He doesn't give a damn what his rational mind is aware of, though.

"I didn't abandon Earth!" he spits. "Thinking about what's happening there _kills _me. But it's funny how you only seem to care now that it's _your _would on fire."

"Sometimes we don't have a choice!" Shepard reminds them both. Her voice is hard and so is the glint in her eye and he knows that she's in full Commander mode and if he pushes it he'll probably be sent back to the ship. Maybe she'll take EDI instead. The AI at least can shoot a gun without letting emotions get in the way of the fight. He bites his lip, seethes silently, but he doesn't push it.

His fingers tighten around the grip of his gun and _Thank God_ they're going in hot. There are so many Reaper forces on the ground that he can shoot without aiming and knock them down. His head still pounds with a steady drumbeat of pain but he unleashes pulse after pulse of biotic energy without caring. He doesn't think, just _lets go_. He channels all of his impotent rage into the battle. He does what Shepard told him to do: he blocks it out.

He blocks it out so that he can pretend those aren't bodies lined up in cold quiet rows under heavy sheets tagged with numbers. He blocks it out so that it doesn't matter how many voices cut out in sharp bursts of static through the radio in his ear. He blocks it out so that when their air support fails to materialize, he can tell himself it's because Asari High Command is incompetent, and not because there is no one left to send.

"Just worry about the next twenty meters," Shepard repeats, every twenty meters, until it becomes a comforting litany.

Shepard follows the blinking light of her omnitool's satnav guidance system, which cuts in and out, jammed by the Reapers or left with no infrastructure to connect to, and Kaidan follows Shepard.

Liara picks up where the technology fails, picking a path for them among the rubble, in the general direction of the temple where they will pray for one last desperate shot at salvation.

Among the screams of the dying, a voice calls Shepard's name. "Commander! We've - I've - been waiting for you." The voice belongs to a young Asari with smooth purplish skin, a tattered military uniform, a vicious looking burn on her arm, and an all-too-familiar deadened expression in her eyes. Kaidan looks at her and sees a kid ordered to hold the line against all hope. And they can't help her. They'll send her out to be the distraction that allows them to move ahead. Guilt squirms in the pit of his stomach. Smoke claws at his eyes, and he coughs. For a moment he can't remember where he is. It feels like Earth.

"We're looking for Outpost Tykis," Shepard says, and he clings to the sound of the words she is speaking until they make sense again, and pull him back.

He looks from her to the kid, and suddenly _feels_ about a thousand years old. He hears in Shepard's voice that she understands exactly what she's asking. He reminds himself that they have no other choice.

"This is it," the soldier confirms. "It's just me left." She steels herself against the oncoming waves of husks and shoulders a missile launcher that dwarfs her tiny frame. "Go, Commander. I'll cover you."

Kaidan glances back in time to see their solitary ally quickly losing ground, fighting valiantly against an overwhelming force. He watches her die.

"So much sacrifice," Liara says, her voice stiff and wooden.

Shepard squeezes her arm and pulls her forward. "We'll make it count," she promises. The temple waits for them in the distance.

He doesn't know what he was expecting at their target. Something better than this. It's all cold white stone, like a monument, or a gravestone. The temple feels... empty. Empty and quiet in a sort of eerie, falsely comforting way. There is a sense of peace here, an island left untouched and completely separate from the apocalypse they've just fought their way through to get here. It rubs Kaidan the wrong way, it feels like a lie. He stares up at the enormous statue of the goddess Liara says no one believes in anymore, and clenches his fists into a tight ball, hoping to ignore the thing's judgmental stare.

"Let's just get this done," he demands.

Shepard nods. "Keep an eye open," she orders, unnecessarily. She runs her hand over the smooth marble base of the statue, and freezes.

Kaidan feels a stirring in his brain, hears snatches of whispering. There is a feeling like electricity, a close web of static, pulled tight over his skin. Not unlike the familiar song of biotic power, but different enough to be noticeable. He's felt it before, and he grinds his teeth as he remembers _where_.

"It's a Prothean Beacon," Shepard whispers.

"Are you sure?" he and Liara ask simultaneously, though he's certain they both know the answer.

"It's not something you _forget_." No, it isn't.

Kaidan crouches into cover instinctively as the walls begin to shake. A piercing ray of light cracks the statue and coils itself around Shepard.

"Incredible," Liara murmurs. "Shepard, the beacon is responding to you as it would to a Prothean. It must be a result of the cipher given to you on Feros."

"That's still... in there?" Kaidan asks. "In you?"

Shepard shrugs. "Guess so. Must've been buried deep. And built to last."

The light begins to coalesce; it forms a ball, and then a nearly-formless humanoid outline. It's voice resonates at frequencies that go beyond merely hearing.

"Obtaining chronological markers." Kaidan understands. "This cycle has already reached its terminus. Shutting down."

"We need answers!" Shepard screams. The lights flicker and then strengthen again, building to an even brighter pulse. It hurts to look at, but Kaidan breathes a sigh of relief. The Prothean VI gives no response to their anger or their desperation.

"To what question?" it asks simply.

Shepard asks about the Protheans, the Crucible, the Catalyst, the Reapers. Each question is only another way of phrasing the larger one, the only one that matters: _How do we win the fight that can't be won?_

The holographic intelligence of a long-dead civilization comes up just as empty as any of them.

Kaidan tries to find something to cling to beyond hollow disappointment.


	20. Shattered

**Note:** Hey, look at that, Kaidan decided to use Shepard's actual name. I didn't tell him to, it just slipped in naturally. So naturally that it felt wrong to change it. So you might probably be seeing it here and there for the rest of the story, when appropriate.

* * *

The vidcom brightly pings an incoming message alert. No one moves to answer it. Kaidan stares at the strobing light because it sends a flare of agony through his skull every time it pierces through his eyelids, and the sensation helps cut through the heavy weight of silent numb despair that has settled over the Normandy.

_Ping. Ping. Ping._

"You gonna get that?" he asks softly. Shepard shrugs, and curls her knees tighter against her chest. Her eyes drift closed. Although she's divested herself of armor, she's still wearing the same undersuit, stained with sweat and smoke and God knows what else.

_Ping. Ping. Pi -_

The Commander suddenly smacks the button.

She doesn't bother to straighten up her outfit or even wipe her face before the 3D camera solidifies her image and beams it across the galaxy. Kaidan finds himself oddly satisfied by that. Let them _see_ what this war really looks like.

It's the Asari Councilor, and the spark of hope in her eyes, the excited pitch of her voice, is so out of place with the reality of the situation that Kaidan wants to scream at her. He doesn't though. He doesn't do anything, even when he glances up to see Shepard looking so lost and fragile and shrunken, curled up as though she can somehow shield herself from the galaxy's disappointment that way.

"Did you find the Catalyst, Commander? When will we be able to complete the Crucible?" The woman's voice is garbled and laced with static, yet still smoother than Shepard's broken response.

"I wish the news was better," she whispers, so softly that Kaidan wonders if the mic can even pick it up. Is she _crying_? On comms with one of the most powerful people in the galaxy. It shakes him slightly, but not enough to overwhelm the lethargy that keeps him barely focused through the pain in his head, the worse pain in his stomach and in his heart.

"The mission was a failure," Shepard reports.

The words are simple. He's said them often enough. The situation on the ground changes, reports are wrong, support doesn't come in when it should, or the objective was just too damned sketchy in the first place. _All_ of those things were true on Thessia, yet it still takes far too long for the answer to come in, as though no one can believe it. Shepard's missions _don't _fail. Shepard survives and gets the job done, _no matter what_. Shepard _can't_ fail, because the hopes of trillions are pinned on her, and they have all forgotten that she is just one real, fallible person. Shepard is a legend, one last shot in the dark. And that shot just misfired.

"_Why?_" the Asari chokes out.

"Cerberus was there," Shepard says. Her voice... doesn't sound like hers. Doesn't sound like anyone's. It's flat and emotionless - worse than EDI, worse than Legion. Like maybe she can no longer find the meaning in the movements of her throat and lips. Like maybe it's easier that way, and least easier enough to keep her moving. Toward _what_, though?

Kaidan traces his thumb along a crack in the floor. His head pounds with every heartbeat. He vaguely remembers the fight she's describing, against a Cerberus assassin who had come to utterly ruin their day. But he can't seem to put the pieces together in the right order. Cortez picked them up in the shuttle - no, that was the last part. There was an earthquake, he remembers that. A lot of really loud darkness. Screaming. Liara screaming Shepard's name, and trying to open his eyes but... _not_. His leg hurts. He looks down and tries to remember why. There is a splint there, holding his left leg immobile. He vaguely remembers something else. Infirmary lights, Chakwas' voice, a stabbing needle. Smooth white marble, cracking and crashing. Falling, on top of him. _Mars?_ No, that was something else.

"What is the situation on Thessia?"

_Who needs to ask?_ Kaidan wonders. _Shouldn't it be obvious?_

"Deteriorating fast. I'm..." The connection cuts out before Shepard can finish the thought. _Shouldn't it be obvious?_

Kaidan limps to his feet and shakes off her questioning gaze. "I'm okay," he lies. "You'll want privacy when you talk to Anderson anyway." She nods slowly, not bothering to deny it. Anderson's like family for her, the only family she has. He gets that. He squeezes her shoulder gently before heading back toward the crew quarters with slow, cautious steps. He turns back at the boundary line of the war room. "Find me if you need me, okay? Promise."

"Yeah, Kaidan."

"Okay."

He stumbles off the elevator to find Tali failing to be discreet in arguing with Garrus over who should talk to Liara. If Shepard isn't coping well, the Asari has taken it to a whole new level.

"I'll talk to her," he announces.

Tali hesitates for a brief moment, then nods. "That's a good idea, Kaidan. You were there. Maybe..."

Maybe he'll make things better. Maybe he'll make things worse. But either way, he has to be the one to hash things out with her.

He limps his way over to the private office where she spends most of her time holed up even on her best days. Glyph lets him in even though she tells him to go away. He pushes through the door and tries not to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of blinking screens staring down at him. Liara is huddled on the overly large bed crammed in behind yet more electronics and screens, a remnant from the days when Miranda the Cerberus cheerleader bitch had claimed this space. Kaidan isn't sure if the Alliance just hadn't made it to retrofitting it right off the ship yet or if Liara had somehow gotten it reinstalled along with her Shadow Broker network. Probably the first. Liara doesn't actually care for unnecessary comforts any more than Shepard does. But, like Shepard, she won't waste them if they're there. He's getting distracted. Who cares about the bed?

It's easier to focus on than the broken woman sprawled out on it, is the thing. He takes a deep breath and starts talking before he can chicken out. "Liara, I'm... sorry. About what I said to you down there. About everything."

Liara sits up and blinks at him, still looking dazed. "It's..." She shakes her head. _It's alright_, she would have said, before. He can hear the empty word echoing in his mind. It's isn't alright. "I understand," Liara amends. "Seeing that... Kaidan, I _am _sorry about Earth."

"I know." He gives her a weak smile that he hopes looks slightly less forced than it is. "Earth isn't done yet. Neither is Thessia."

She looks like she is going to argue, but she finally nods. "If anyone has a chance, it's Shepard."

"You're the one that found the Crucible in the first place, Liara."

"I suppose so."

"You _did_," he insists.

"Kaidan?"

"I'm okay," he protests. He isn't though. His words are starting to slur, his leg is throbbing, his head screams.

When he wakes up, Chakwas is hovering over him. She's apparently had a few hours to prepare a proper lecture. She cuts it down to the highlight reel in response to his jittery disregard for everything she's saying and the glare he shoots her. She must've shot him up with the _really_ _good_ painkillers, because he feels nothing more than a gentle throbbing behind his eyelids. His broken leg feels mostly numb. If he stops trying to walk around, and lets her continue injecting him with some torturously agonizing concoction she's got locked up in her medicine cabinet, he'll be good as new within a week. He agrees to be more careful and to keep the swearing and threatening of her nonexistent family to a minimum during treatment sessions.

"Shepard?"

"Go take care of her, Kaidan."

He nods, and hauls himself to the elevator up to her cabin. He wasn't invited. He decides that doesn't matter. The door keys green the minute it reads his identification. Good. Saves him the trouble of bypassing it.

Shepard is almost hidden, tucked tight into the corner of the desk where she's reading one of a teetering stack of datapads. The war room follows her everywhere, it seems. She glances up at him, quickly, but she connects long enough for him to recognize the tears in her eyes before she turns back to the message in her hand. He reads over her shoulder, the brutal taunt of a ruthless enemy, laughing at the human weakness of Shepard's _caring_: "An entire planet is dying because you lacked the strength to win."

Kaidan rips the datapad out of her grip and throws it across the room. It smacks against the wall with a satisfying clank, leaving a scuff mark before it clatters to the ground and winks out.

"Fuck him," he snarls. "You're gonna let that goddamn Cerberus bastard beat you?"

"He _did_ beat me, Kaidan!"

"Anna, look at me," he whispers. She does, and he gently rests the palm of his hand against her cheek, tilting her chin up so he can look into her dark, deadened eyes, bloodshot and heavy with exhaustion. "_You're still here_," he insists. "You're still standing and he ran away."

"To give the only tool we have against the Reapers to the Illusive Man!"

"It isn't over yet. We can still win this. Traynor -"

She interrupts him with a strangled cry, slamming a hard punch against his chest. He stumbles backward before catching her, slowing massing her fingers, unclenching the fists they're balled into. He inhales and exhales softly and slowly for what seems like a lifetime before she falls into the rhythm, unconsciously matching her breathing to his. He guides her to the couch and sits with her. "I just don't think I can do it anymore," she sobs, curling up in his waiting arms. "I _can't_."

"Shh," he hums, stroking the soft waves of her hair, which coil in sweaty ringlets at the base of her neck. They are so close together that he can taste the burn of alcohol on her breath. He'd heard she'd been in the lounge the whole time he'd been out of it in the medbay. He knows she must've drunk enough to drown, but she still refuses to sleep. Her guilt and fear still pulls her, clawing, for the surface.

Kaidan gnaws at his lower lip and runs his thumb alongside the artificial scar that _still_ won't heal. He remembers when that mark alone was enough to make him think that she wasn't _real_, somehow, that she wasn't his. Now it only serves to remind him of how much pain she's in, as though this rebuilt body has conspired to provide visible evidence of all the wounds no one should be able to see. "You don't have to do anything tonight," he murmurs, still rubbing slow circles across her back. "I've got you." She is so still that he thinks she must've fallen asleep, and then she stirs again, shifting in his arms and babbling incoherent protests until his fingers land against her skin once again. "Sleep off the booze, Commander, or nobody'll forgive me."

"I forgive you."

"Okay," he whispers. He loops a loose strand of hair behind her ear and brushes his lips across her forehead. This time, her eyes stay closed.

* * *

**Other Note:** "The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are stronger at the broken places." - Ernest Hemingway


	21. Communications Specialists

"I'm not taking you in the field when your leg is still busted. You're a liability!"

"I'm _fine_."

"No. You sit this one out. That's an order."

"I outrank you."

"Not on this ship. Are we _really_ going to have this fight?"

"I'm the best you have for this job and you know it. I was posted on Horizon for months. I know the land, the people there..."

"Oh yeah? You know what we're gonna find in a Cerberus black site that didn't even _exist_ a month ago?"

"Do you?"

"Kaidan..." He sighs, already squirming under the weight of her disappointment. He folds. She already knows she's won the argument, and she immediately softens. Well, at least as much as anyone can while strapping a sniper rifle to their back. "I'm taking EDI with me. She knows more about how to cripple Cerberus than the rest of us combined could hope to. And you know Garrus can handle shooting anything that needs shot. And I really need you on the Normandy. This isn't like the old days. We can't just run and gun and trust somebody else to handle the big decisions. The crew needs a good leader, and that's you."

"_You're _the leader."

"Not the good one. I break all the rules, I let my emotions take over, I don't think things through... I never have. Anderson told me any other soldier with my record would've been court-martialed and discharged a long time ago, and he's right."

Kaidan knows that part, at least, is true, but he doesn't know if she wants him to agree or disagree, so he does neither. He simply gives her a crisp salute to officially accept responsibility for the Normandy in her absence. "Hurry back, Commander."

Shepard rolls her eyes at the sudden formality, tracing her hand down his arm on her way to the airlock. "You'll never even know I was gone. Promise."

Kaidan nods, but winces internally. It's like she _intentionally tries_ to dare the universe to make her life more difficult. It sure is good to see her confident again, though.

She isn't wrong about there being a lot of work on the Normandy either. Their crew is good, maybe even the best in the Alliance, but they've been pushing hard for weeks, nearly nonstop, with a less-than-ideal complement of staff and stops for supplies few and far between. Equipment breaks down and is repaired over and over again with hope and duct tape, kept running by Tali's experience holding the Quarian Fleet's centuries-old ships together, or Garrus and EDI playing math games. Traynor is constantly manipulating signals in the static to reconnect communication with a galaxy that is collapsing all around them.

He finds her hovering near the map, mumbling scattered words and half-sentences as she flips a stylus between her fingers and paces, staring intently at a datapad.

"It was a good catch, coming here," he tells her honestly. "Finding active jamming through a relay jump... That's impressive work. I don't think any of us would've noticed it."

Traynor jumps at the sound of his voice, but quickly composes herself. "It... well, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't difficult, but it is my job, and it was a really fascinating challenge, and... ugh! Here I go... babbling again... Let me start over: Thank you, Major." She flashes him a tiny, embarrassed smile, and Kaidan can't help but return it. "Can we just pretend that's all I said, just 'Thank you'?"

"Sure," Kaidan laughs. "And you're welcome."

"Don't worry about the Commander. I'm sure she'll be alright."

"Who says I'm worried?"

"Too personal?"

"For someone at your pay-grade? Absolutely."

"Sorry, sir. I'll try harder to keep my mouth shut."

Kaidan raises an eyebrow, leaning back against the bulkhead. He doesn't mean to, exactly, but somehow it's just _easy_ to relax around Traynor. That's hard to find on a military vessel. Probably why they'd let her stay. "No promises though?" he asks.

"No promises," she replies easily, with a teasing smile.

"What're you working on now?"

"Trying to get through that active jamming. No luck so far, though. I'll let you know."

Kaidan nods. With Cerberus still blocking comms in a wide field around the planet, Horizon might as well be a black hole. He cannot listen to Shepard's voice over the squad's radio frequency or track her progress in blinking-light trails relayed from her armor's GPS. He never has before, at least not for more than a few moments at a stretch; contrary to her opinion, he does not actually spend his time babysitting her when she's on the ground. But having the option removed is still distinctly unsettling. He continues his circuit of the Normandy. It takes his mind off all the things that could be going wrong down below.

On the bridge, Joker is just as antsy, and the absence of EDI's already-familiar presence in the co-pilot's seat explains why. Kaidan drops into the chair, suddenly reminded of a former life a thousand years ago (or three), when he _fit_ here, bantering easily with Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau as he flipped lighted switches and did his part to keep the Normandy flying.

Joker must remember too, because he spins his chair halfway to regard Kaidan, his mouth quirked into a wry smile. "You know, Spectres are still trouble."

"And you're still paranoid," Kaidan retorts.

"Am I really, though?" Joker asks softly, _far _too seriously, and Kaidan finds that he cannot actually come up with a decent response.

They spend most of the next few hours keeping to their own thoughts, drifting in the total quiet of space.

When Shepard returns to the ship, she's subdued. Not _destroyed_, as she was on the way home from Thessia, when she clung to him in the shuttle and refused to speak to Liara or anyone else except in short, absolutely critical sit-reps. She meets his eye and gives him a nod and a weak smile that is enough to confirm the success of the mission, but it's obvious whatever win they'd picked up had come at a heavy cost. As she heads into the war room to brief Hackett - a task Kaidan doesn't envy given that they'd gone off the grid without permission and completely on a hunch - he makes his way over to Garrus.

"It was _rough_, down there," the Turian confirms immediately. "Cerberus was... conducting experiments. Turning refugees into husks, slaughtering them by the thousands. An attempt to _control _the Reapers." The look in his eyes, the tone in his voice... Kaidan starts to understand how 'Archangel' could fight the whole of Omega and win. "And here I thought I was done being surprised by what humans are capable of doing to one another."

"What Cerberus does is not a fair representation of humanity," Kaidan protests, weakly. The truth is that just _imagining_ such actions - at they are all too easy to imagine - makes him sick. It's no wonder Shepard - and even Garrus - look shaken.

"And there are plenty of others in the galaxy who do bad things, yes, I'm aware," Garrus agrees easily. "Still... sometimes there just aren't enough bullets. And Shepard... Miranda Lawson died in her arms. Wasn't a thing any of us could've done to save her."

"Miranda?" Kaidan repeats. His stomach clenches into an odd knot when she thinks about the woman. He doesn't know her, but he knows she was the one to bring Shepard back to life, and for that he owes her. Even if... "She was working for Cerberus? She was _part _of that?"

"No," Garrus corrects, his voice surprisingly rough. "She wasn't working for them, Kaidan, she was trying to stop them. And, in the end... she may have saved us all."

"What are -"

Turians don't smile, not like humans do, yet Kaidan _knows_ Garrus, and he can easily read the satisfaction coming from the alien. "The Cerberus bitch just handed us the keys to the Illusive Man's front door."


	22. Through Everything

This is it.

A strange calm overtakes the Normandy, in the aftermath of fevered mission briefings with Hackett that kept the majority of the crew huddled in the war room for hours. They'd always known it was coming, yet somehow it still feels sudden, like an uncertain drop off a cliff. It seems nearly everyone has retreated to quiet spaces, finding comfort where they can. Or just "relieving stress," as Garrus had once put it.

Kaidan watches the clock tick down in the war room and listens to the hum of the drive core and stares out at the map, where the red dots of enemy forces swallow them all, emotionlessly. After what might be minutes or hours of this, he sighs, tells the few remaining Marines scattered around the room to comm him in the case of an emergency, and ducks into the starboard observation deck which somewhere along the line had turned into the private quarters he's technically entitled to as XO but never asked for. He rummages through the duffle that still contains everything he owns, until his fingers lock around the smooth heavy glass of a whiskey bottle with the logo of Huerta Memorial Hospital stuck to the label. Another quick stop in the lounge to grab a couple of glasses, and he steps onto the elevator, counting the slow seconds until the doors slide open and dump him in front of Anna's door. He wonders if he should knock. He wonders if he should _be_ here. He knows the Commander needs to focus, now more than ever. He keys open the door.

"Hey. Couldn't sleep either?"

"No," Kaidan admits. Anna hasn't glanced up from the datapad for even half a second. He sets the alcohol down at the edge of the desk and wraps his arms around her. He tries to take the 'pad out of her hand, but she won't give it up. He lets her keep it. "Garrus told me about Miranda," he says. "Are you okay?"

He runs his thumb in soft circles along the inside of her wrist until she looks up, for once actually appearing to consider the question. "I think I could maybe use an emergency induction straw," she finally says.

"What?"

"Nothing. Never mind." She takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, yanking her arm out of his grip to keep scrolling through the datapad. "You know, I keep running the numbers, looking for something that I missed..."

"Hey." He grabs her hand again, and this time he does wrestle the datapad away. "You have done absolutely everything that you can possibly do. Making yourself crazy with this won't help."

"I know, but..."

"Shh..." he insists. "No buts. Just have a quick drink. Five minutes, then I'll go."

"Kaidan, I can't be distracted!"

"I'm not a distraction. I'm here to help you relax. Relaxing will help you focus."

"You really believe that?"

"It worked on Ilos, didn't it?"

It takes a few heartbeats but Shepard finally smiles, a look of genuine happiness that he hasn't seen in _far_ too long. "Yeah," she admits, leaning back against the wall where the fish tank controls flicker behind her touch, sending up a sudden stream of bubbles behind her head. "I guess it did work pretty well."

"Oh yeah, that's all? Just 'pretty well'? Because _I _was pretty spectacular, if I'm remembering right."

She laughs and pushes him until he trips backward, landing awkwardly on the bed. "You weren't bad," she concedes, crawling on top of him. He grins, and Anna rolls over, laying on her back and staring up at the stars visible through the thick window above them. They're beautiful, but Kaidan flips over so he can see her instead. He watches her chest rise and fall slowly with each breath, notices the way a loose strand of hair flutters outward from her lips with each soft exhalation.

"Okay, I lied," he admits, reaching out for her, pulling her on top of him. "I didn't come up here for a quick drink."

She rolls her eyes. "No kidding."

But then she pushes herself up, twisting away from his arms.

"Hey, where're you going?" he asks softly.

She turns back, but settles into a casual crouch, a defensive posture, and most definitely out of his reach. "I wish I could, Kaidan. I want to. But my heart wouldn't be in it."

He nods, pulling her close. It's not about that anyway. Not that he'd mind; he absolutely, totally wouldn't mind. But he's here for her, and he understands. Some things are too big for distraction. "Okay," he says simply "Whatever you need."

"Don't leave," she orders. "Just stay awhile."

"Yeah. Of course." He holds her, rubbing her back idly. His eyes eventually drift closed, as he listens to her soft breathing and holds her close against his body.

Sudden movement jolts him awake. He blinks his eyes open to see Anna sitting on the edge of the bed, carefully still. He rests his hand on her shoulder "What's up?"

She shakes her head, leaning against him. He takes one glance at the dark shadows under her eyes and wonders if she got any sleep at all. "Are we gonna make it?" she asks softly.

"We're ready," Kaidan assures her. "You've put the people together, the vision. Whatever happens now, it's gonna be..." Not _okay. _But maybe not a lost cause either. He sighs, brushing his fingers along the curve of her neck, and shrugs. "It's gonna be what it is. And you've given us hope and a fighting chance."

Shepard sighs. "I'm glad I inspire that in you, but sometimes, Kaidan..."

"Do you trust me?" he interrupts, refusing to let her go.

She doesn't say anything. She doesn't have to. Her answer is too strong and certain and real to put into words. She tucks herself against his body, until he is breathing with her lungs, her heartbeat pumping through his blood. He can feel her nod as he combs his fingers through her hair, looping and unlooping the strands until they tangle hopelessly. She never seems to mind. He wonders if she even notices.

"I've believed in you ever since you threw me out of the way of that beacon I jumped in front of like an idiot," he tells her.

Shepard draws in a shaky breath and pulls away again. "I thought you hated me, after Horizon," she demands.

He closes his eyes and sighs, his fingers stilling, though he still will not stop touching her, afraid if he lets go, he'll lose her. "I know," he admits. "I never did, though, I never could."

"Then why didn't you _listen_ to me?"

He'd allowed himself to believe they could move on with... whatever this is that they have. He'd figured that somehow they had mutually decided to pretend that Horizon had never happened. But being there again seems to have pulled it back up to the surface, or maybe it's just that they she's caught up in the same desperate need to leave nothing unsaid that's swept over the rest of the Normandy, the insistent awareness of _finality_ that sent him up here.

The strength of those old emotions crashes in his stomach like a raging storm, one he's spent years learning to avoid and working to keep in check. He's always envied Shepard's complete fearlessness. She'd told him she lets her emotions get the better of her, but at least she's never let fear of what might happen paralyze her. He does. He almost lost her completely because of that fear.

"Because nothing makes sense with you, Anna, it never does. I needed something to rely on, I had people counting on me," he insists, with the old excuses. They sound incredibly weak now. They didn't feel any better at the time. But he remembers how strongly he'd felt that it was important she not pull him back into her orbit before he could think it through. He'd needed to be _sure. _He's never been able to just trust somebody on a hunch the way she can. He needs her to understand that. It wasn't personal, or maybe it was, but he _never _intended to hurt her so badly. "You were _dead_," he reminds her. _You left __me__, _he doesn't say. He'd spent so long trying to build himself back up after she sent him drifting into a tailspin of lonely purposelessness again. That's him: Major Kaidan Alenko, the probably-unstable loner who can barely pick up the pieces when a relationship goes south.

"So much for putting our feelings aside for the sake of the mission, eh?"

"I don't think that was ever really an option," he admits.

"No," she agrees with another heavy sigh. "Probably not."

She gets up from the bed and starts pulling her clothes on. As she disappears into the bathroom to splash water on her face, the omnitool she's tossed on the floor begins to chime. Kaidan sighs, fiddling with it quickly, flipping the alarm off and reaching for his own pants. He's not sure whatever distraction or comfort he'd managed to give her is enough, for either of them, but as he'd told her: it's gonna be what it is.

"Hey Commander, you're not gonna keep me grounded this time, are you?"

"Not a chance."


	23. Real Enough

The shuttle streaks toward the empty metal shell of the space station that holds a thousand Cerberus soldiers like hornets swarming in a nest that they're about to kick open. Kaidan glances at EDI, who is sitting across from him, so close that her smooth metal legs are actually touching his, and tries not to be unsettled. He's been alone with her before, on the Normandy, had conversations even, but this is somehow different. The cramped cabin forces them together, forces him to acknowledge the artificiality of her, forces him to notice the way her eyes never blink or her body never shifts; she has no nervous tics, her presence brings no warmth or tiny exhalations of air, no comforting reminders of humanity or fragility. Not to mention, the body that is EDI now had once tried to kill him. Not the _person_ that is EDI: he knows that. He actually _likes_ EDI, likes her strange sense of humor and appreciates her absolute loyalty to Shepard and to the Normandy. But still... he continuously shifts position and hums snatches of old favorite songs under his breath until Shepard shoots him a worried glance and he puts a lid on it. And he watches EDI, who is simply _there_, running algorithms and programs with calm efficiency.

The shuttle gets them in under the radar, enough that they actually have a few moments to take in their surroundings, find cover, and begin formulating the early stages of a plan before Cerberus troopers start shooting at them. To Kaidan, this feels like an unbelievable luxury. At least until the moment in the thick of the firefight a few heartbeats later when a screeching alarm klaxon nearly blows out his eardrums in the split-second before his helmet's audio dampers compensate. Laced in between the obnoxious blasts of pure sound, words begin to come together: "Intruder alert. Initiate Achilles Protocol."

"They intend to vent the hangar," EDI states, loudly enough to be heard over the commotion. It gives Kaidan the familiar impression of a panicked shout over a battlefield, for a moment EDI is no different than anybody else on the squad. He wonders if the AI is actually _worried_.

"Can you stop them?" Shepard screams back, in between the bursts from her SMG that mow down the wave of assaulting enemy forces.

"Yes." Was there ever actually any doubt? Kaidan wonders what it would be like to just _know_ whether you are capable of doing something, without needing to try, without wasting critical time on lost causes. He realizes that EDI has followed Shepard through one lost cause after another and considers revising his preconceptions. "I will need manual access to an active console, Shepard."

How come EDI calls her that? He's never thought to wonder about it before. With everyone else on the ship, she follows protocol and acknowledges them by rank. Well, except Joker - Jeff. But for the CO, it's different. _Shepard, _almost always. Not 'Commander,' unless responding to the direct orders that are few and far between. Because that's the way it's always been for everyone else on the Normandy? Is that a learned behavior? He makes a mental note to ask one day, as he squeezes the trigger on his Predator and drops the final Cerberus attacker.

"There are no further enemy squads nearby," EDI confirms, agreeing with the data on his HUD display.

Shepard pulls herself up an access ladder to the upper level overlooking the hangar, where a display monitor glows a soft orange. "Found a console."

EDI plugs in, and numbers flash across the screen, too fast for Kaidan to read. The warning messages go silent. "Cerberus will know that their attempt to vent the air from this area has failed," EDI warns. "They will send manual backup."

"We'll be ready," Shepard assures her. Kaidan agrees, reloading his gun and settling into a covering position. He is more than capable of handling 'manual backup.' He tries not to admit how much panic the possibility of sudden exposure to vacuum had ignited. It doesn't matter now. He watches EDI shadow Shepard and is suddenly very, _very_ glad that the Cerberus AI is on their side.

"I cannot override the lockdown," EDI tells them. Is it just his imagination, or does she sound _disappointed_? Kaidan chews on his lower lip while Shepard asks for alternate ideas. It's not like he'd expected Cerberus to just _open_ their front door, but driving a spaceship through the base does seem a little excessive. Still, imagining the look on the Illusive Man's face almost makes it worth it.

They pick a path through the station, following the trail of destruction created by their intentionally misaimed fighter launch. Smoke billows, and fire grasps fitfully for survival under the drenching downpours of flame-retardant foam automatically released by the station's emergency protocols. As EDI predicted, squads of Cerberus troops rush toward their position at predictable intersections. Luckily, the magnetically locked bulkheads prove just as much an impairment for them as for the invasion they seek to stall. And Kaidan highly doubts any of the standardized response plans were designed with a rogue AI in mind. EDI bypasses and reseals whatever still-solid doors are in their path with a speed no organic could hope to match.

After three or four such doors, they come to one that stays stubbornly red, occasionally flashing orange or yellow, repeatedly kicking out EDI's attempts to hack through.

"Shepard, that console has not been fully scrubbed. It contains information you may find... interesting."

"What am I looking at?"

"Project Lazarus. You. Your... reconstruction."

Kaidan doesn't miss the way Shepard's fingers pull away from the keyboard, as though she'd just touched something scaldingly hot. She throws a quick glance back in his direction before turning back to the screen. There is a crackle of static and then an image flashes up. Simple, low-quality 2D video, from a high-up and awkwardly positioned angle that immediately suggests a security camera.

"-ling you, sir, it can't be done," a man in a white labcoat is saying. "It's not a matter of resources."

"It's _always_ a matter of resources. I _will not _lose Shepard."

"Commander Shepard is clinically brain dead," the probably-doctor says, very slowly, as though explaining something to a stubborn child. "The amount of trauma sustained, _that long_ without oxygen... all the money in the universe cannot overcome nature."

"I didn't realize it was... that bad," Shepard whispers, her fingers hovering over the screen as though she could reach in and change the scene.

"I figured you were just on life support," Kaidan murmurs. _We all thought you were dead_, he'd told her, so many times, but somehow he'd never allowed the thought to solidify into something _real_. Even knowing _exactly_ what happens to a body after being ejected into space... there were gruesome videos and lectures through dozens of safety briefings and medical training courses, and he knows Shepard's seen the same ones. But he'd separated that cold factual knowledge from his knowledge of _her_. That hadn't happened to Shepard, because if it _had_, she wouldn't be standing here in front of him. "Clinically brain dead," he repeats numbly.

"Looks like." Shepard scrubs her hand over her eyes and taps her foot up and down, an action so _human_ that Kaidan can't help but lock onto it.

"What was it like?" he asks, like an idiot. What's he looking for, a white-light story, with singing choirs of angels? Or maybe something more mundane but more solid: pain and hospital walls and beeping monitors, because these are the things you notice when you are almost, but _not_, dead. He thinks about the clinical diagrams in old textbooks. He can't _not_ think about them. He briefly prays to whatever God might be listening that she _doesn't_ remember. He takes a breath and tries again. "How do you _feel_?"

The look Shepard gives him his heartbreaking. "I'm still _me_," she insists, but Kaidan hears the hitch in her voice and the familiar pulse of anger behind it. Here she is, still trying to convince herself she's fine when she isn't. "Or maybe I'm just a high-tech VI that _thinks_ it's Commander Shepard," she spits, broken and bitter.

Kaidan looks at her, _really _looks at her: right here in front of him, warm and breathing, with the same quirks and hatreds and tells as she's always had. "Hey." He squeezes her shoulder and brushes a gentle kiss at the base of her neck. "You're real enough for me."

Anna shrugs him off without a word. He understands. _Words won't be enough to convince you, will they? _God, Mars seems like a million years ago now. He curses himself for wasting so much time with suspicion and doubt. He can't pinpoint a moment when that doubt went away. Does it matter? All he knows now is that the man who had those doubts is _completely_ different from who he is now.

He can't imagine ever thinking that the person standing in front of him is anything other than Commander Anberlin Shepard, Anna, the woman who shares a bed with him and steals all the blankets, and plays Skyllian Five poker, for keeps. She cries when watching romance vids and laughs when she hits a target at the firing range, dead-center, with a new gun she's never touched before. She's put herself in front of every other living being in the galaxy, shouldered the burden of the entire Reaper War. What the hell kind of VI would do that?

There are other logs available. Shepard ignores them and yanks on every cord within reach, until the console goes dark with a violent snap. "How's that door comin' EDI?"

"We are clear to proceed," the robotic voice assures them. She mentions nothing about the data stored in the recordings, or the reactions of her organic companions.

Kaidan wonders if it's because she _has _no reaction to offer, or if she is keeping her thoughts to herself because she knows Shepard wants it that way.


	24. I'm Fine With Killing Crazy

Destroying Cerberus is almost anti-climactic, in the end.

Anti-climactic doesn't mean not creepy though. They crawl through the shell of a dead Reaper, and Kaidan shivers, thinking of Sanctuary, thinking of Shepard... this is what Cerberus does. They twist humanity beyond recognition in the name of saving it. They don't know when to _stop_, that there are some things more important than _survival_. He stands by what he said earlier: he has never felt more ready to kill someone in his entire life. He cannot wait to bring the Illusive Man's organization tumbling down around his ears. Right before sending the Reapers back to whatever hell they crawled out of.

They reach an island of unnaturally calm stillness at the center of the storm, and despite himself, Kaidan is impresssed. Awestruck, even. He'd been aware that the station they're on is orbiting a dying star, but knowing that hadn't prepared him for the sight of it. the tapestry of fire plays out in front of him, taking up the entirety of an enormous reinforced window that takes up nearly all of the room they're in. Apparently, the Illusive Man hadn't gotten the memo about structural weaknesses.

As Kaidan watches the magnetic storms dance and swirl along the surface of the giant ball, Shepard spins around and pulls her gun, aiming at the empty space where a familiar flicker of energy resolves into a three-dimensional projection of the Illusive Man: full-size, unlike the standard vidcom units the Alliance uses. Kaidan is outside the range of the microphones and image projectors required to sustain the call, so he has no idea what the Cerberus leader is saying. From the look on Shepard's face, he has a pretty good guess though.

As the Commander holds the attention of the absent terrorist, EDI works to unlock the Prothean VI. Kaidan watches her instead, wondering why the Illusive Man wouldn't take the key to the Catalyst with him when he fled into whatever bolthole he had waiting. There are too many unanswered questions. He doesn't like it at all.

The image of the Illusive Man winks out as suddenly as it had appeared, and the projectors struggle to put together a new picture, and Kaidan continues to watch uselessly as Shepard appears to converse with the flickering holographic outline that is the Prothean VI. He hears snatches and whispers in the ancient and unfamiliar language that he recognizes from the beacons they'd unearthed, but his "universal" translator was never programmed to handle something 50,000 years old. Apparently the VI, like the one on Thessia, still believes that Shepard is one of its own.

Kaidan fights the urge to pacefa around the room just to feel like he's doing something. He lets the crackling energy of biotic potential flow through him instead. It wraps itself around him, skipping off his armor in dancing blue sparks.

"EDI, get me Hackett!" Shepard suddenly snaps, and Kaidan jumps to attention. He has no idea what that Prothean _said_, but it seems that, as usual, the ancient alien race bears only bad news. He tightens his hold on the grip of his pistol. It will not help him fight against an empty room, but it makes him feel better. And it gives him more of an advantage than he otherwise would have had when it comes to reacting to the familiar prickle of a biotic charge pulsing outward, ahead of the harsh hissing click of an infiltrator's cloak breaking out of stealth mode.

"He did warn you not to overstay your welcome," sneers Kai Leng, the Illusive Man's pet.

Kaidan lashes out, throwing everything he has against the man, but Kai Leng's own biotic barrier holds, repelling most of the force aimed his way. Kaidan ducks behind cover as Shepard and EDI light up the assassin's path with repeating blasts of weaponsfire.

"You're still _slow_, Shepard," Kai Leng taunts.

Kaidan grits his teeth and squeezes the trigger of his gun, but the cybernetically-enchanced assassin twists out of the way before the shot from the heavy pistol can do more than graze him. He concentrates on gathering a ball of biotic energy, forming it into a shape he can control, than throwing it outward in a wave of overwhelming force. This attack is much more successful.

"I'm only slow because _I'm not running_!" Shepard insists. Her shot hits, although Leng is lying prone, still dazed from Kaidan's assault on his nervous system. The assassin is superhumanly persistent, he keeps coming at them through hit after hit that should've killed him. His armor is blown away, his bones twist at angles no human body was ever meant to adopt, blood pours from his ears and nose: the telltale sign of the brutal biotic assaults Kaidan has been throwing at him. He lasts a _long_ time, far longer than he should, but in the end, Shepard leads a three-man squad against one rapidly-weakening man. And that man loses.

As Kaidan trips, shaky after expending so much energy in the fight, Kai Leng finally falls. Shepard holsters her gun and helps Kaidan to his feet, then swipes her hand along the Illusive Man's computer console, where the Prothean VI still waits, unfazed by the attempted murder and lethal retaliation that have just played out in front of it. Kaidan knows the VI is little more than a shiny datapad, but it's still slightly disappointing. He listens to the repetitive murmurs of sound and prays Shepard is getting the answers they've spent all the time they _don't have_ searching for. He can't help but be aware that the Protheans themselves ran out of time. It is a disheartening thought.

Kaidan glances up in time to see Kai Leng dragging himself to his feet behind Shepard. Blood burbles from his lips and paints his flesh and pools along his path, darkening the unnaturally shiny floor. Kaidan sees it, but he doesn't react quickly enough. By the time he's pulled the trigger on the gun he should never have let go of, Shepard has flipped out the spike modded into her omnitool, just in case. She stabs backward: once, twice - hitting Kai Leng in the heart and stomach.

"That was for Thane and Miranda, you son of a bitch!" she snarls. Kaidan's pretty sure she'd never even looked at the man as she killed him. He stares down at the body. This time there is absolutely no doubt that the assassin is dead. There's no getting up with the kind of holes that are punched clean through him. And if there's anything left of Cerberus after this fight, they won't be able to pick up the remains from the station Hackett's fleet is waiting to reduce to fine dust.

"You okay?" he asks softly.

"Damn right I am," Shepard insists. She storms out of the room, pulling Kaidan in her wake.

They've got a universe to save.


	25. Catalyst

Reaper-controlled space. The system you refer to as Sol. Earth.

The cradle of human life, and _home_.

Kaidan stares out at the panorama spread out below him as he watches from the Normandy's observation deck, and he barely recognizes it.

There are gaping wounds ripped into the planet, cities burning in unquenchable fires visible even from here, and Kaidan knows it will be a thousand times worse on the ground.

The shadow of the Citadel looms, a giant bullet hovering over the combined galactic fleets. A bullet in the hands of the enemy, but also their only chance for defeating them. _The Citadel is the Catalyst._

The fact strikes Kaidan as overwhelmingly surreal, but then, so does almost everything about this war, from the moment he'd first seen the recording of Sovereign's attack on Eden Prime, flickering images broken by white noise, and terrifying even then. Back then, at the beginning, he'd known Shepard only as the brand new XO of the brand new Normandy. He'd been a still-raw lieutenant, an L2 biotic with a questionable past, and she'd been the mysterious sole survivor of the massacre of Akuze, rumored to be possibly-crazy and _definitely_ not someone to mess with. The plan had been to be a good soldier: follow her orders and stay out of her way.

She'd shattered that plan into a thousand pieces within the first hour of their first mission. From the moment he'd treated her for shock on Eden Prime, treating her for shock and possible head trauma in the aftermath of the accidental triggering of the Prothean beacon, he'd known he'd follow her through hell.

He follows her into this war that's frozen in a waiting breath, before they take the plunge. Kaidan stares out at the hovering space station, closed up tight to form an outline unfamiliar to someone who's gotten used to coming home to the Citadel's welcoming arms. Since joining the Alliance, he'd been there more than Earth: a fact he he feels guilty for now, at the same time as he grieves for both the Citadel _and_ Earth.

_The Citadel is the Catalyst_.

Try as he might, Kaidan _cannot_ see the Citadel as merely an object or a weapon. The Citadel is the heart of galactic government, home to countless thousands. He thinks of the weeks he'd spent recovering in its hospital, remembers the docking bays teeming with refugees seeking safety among the diplomats and bureaucrats from dozens of worlds. He imagines Bailey, and late-night drinks with C-Sec officers back when he'd been posted there for a brief time after Shepard's presumed death. They'd holed up in Purgatory, where Alliance soldiers on shore leave mingled with the duct rats and petty criminals. The Citadel is not a weapon; it is markets and meetings, loves and hates and feuds and loyalties. The Citadel is a world of its own: now utterly erased in the blink of an eye, without thought or care. At least Earth still has a chance; all of the armies of the galaxy will fight for it.

"I've got a priority message from Admiral Hackett," Joker announces. The words by now are almost rote, a familiar refrain. "He's... requesting to come aboard." Kaidan's head snaps up from the datapad maps he'd been microanalyzing, looking for _anything _that can give them even the barest hint of an edge planetside. _That _part is new.

"Permission granted," Shepard replies, more quickly than Kaidan has ever heard. She meets his eyes briefly and he gives her what he hopes is a reassuring nod before she turns back to the airlock. The Admiral steps through a docking tube onto the Normandy's command deck, flanked smoothly by a two-man honor guard.

"Commander."

"Admiral," Shepard replies, with a clean salute.

For the first time in a long, _long_ time, Kaidan feels like his uniform actually _matters_, that he belongs to something bigger than the crew of the Normandy.

_I'm an Alliance soldier. Always will be, _he'd insisted, when Shepard_ wasn't,_ that day she'd landed on Horizon in Cerberus colors.

Watching her now, he can't believe he'd ever questioned her loyalty. The Alliance bond is tighter than family; she'd never turn her back on it, not when it really matters.

"Are you ready to bring the might of the galaxy to bear on the Reapers?" Admiral Hackett asks, all confident determination.

"Yes, sir."

"Then let's make sure the fleets are ready."

Kaidan listens to the rundown, and something kindles within him: hope. The stupid, stubborn, impossible to kill belief that it might still be possible to win this thing after all.

Shepard disappears into the War Room with Hackett for a vidcom briefing with Anderson and the forces on the ground. Kaidan isn't invited, which is perfectly fine by him. He takes the elevator down to the armory and starts prepping his gear. The motions are comforting, both because he can perform them without effort and because it helps to think that that doing so might be the slight boost needed to keep himself and Shepard alive down there.

Holding onto that insane fragmentary hope grows more difficult when they leave the comforting confines of the Normandy. The shuttle streaks down toward Earth's atmosphere, breaking through the cloud layers. Above them, the Reapers tear apart the fleets. Dying ships fall like shooting stars, as the radio pings too many overlapping distress signals to count until the signal breaks apart, leaving them sitting in silence.

"How's it look down there?" Shepard asks. Kaidan knows she means tactically; the Commander needs to know what to expect, how to move forward; she needs to think in terms of maps and numbers and blinking-dot positions.

But Cortez tells the truth. "Like hell," he replies simply.

Earth: blue and green and white in all the maps and memories. Now it's black. Thick clouds of choking dust coat everything. Where once skyscrapers competed to reach up to the stars, now nothing larger than two or three stories is left standing. Whole city blocks have been eradicated, leaving nothing but burnt-out sand. There are very few visible bodies, at least, a relief until the cold shock of the reason throws itself in his face: mutilated husks swarming mindlessly. He kills without caring, sweeping them down with careful shots from his sidearm and more desperate biotic retaliation.

Pain spikes through his hand, suddenly, and he glances down to see the twisted sharp metal of what used to be part of a garden fence stabbing through his glove. He yanks it out, resolves to be more careful. The bleeding slows and stops without the need for medigel as he breathes, looking out at the city: remembering that people used to live here. The trampled patch of dirt where nothing grows echoes within his heart like a hollow joke. The huge clock tower - Big Ben - is still visible in the hazy skyline. Kaidan stares up at it and imagines that the familiar landmark is somehow keeping an eye on them, like a sentinel. He wonders if Anderson had also found comfort in the icon.

"airb- ...stiles incomi- ..." Cortez informs them, the message garbled and broken but clear enough. Shepard curses and Kaidan looks up in time to see the shuttle explode. Fire and debris rain down along with any ghost of a chance that Cortez might have time to evac and stay alive.

Shepard glances back at him, and Kaidan opens his mouth to say something, but she just sets her jaw and shakes her head, and starts picking a path forward to the heavy weapons cache waiting in the wreckage. It's the best tribute she can give the lieutenant who had become her friend, and they both know it. She does her job, targeting the Reaper with the rocket launcher salvaged from the groundships it had shot down, taking vengeance with the kind of ruthless efficiency that has made her name known across the galaxy.

She doesn't allow herself to falter until she's curled up in the corner of Anderson's transport on the way to the resistance F.O.B. Kaidan sits next to her and watches the Admiral, who glances at him briefly before turning to study Shepard with far more care.

"You okay?"

"I'm alive," she replies.

Anderson nods. He looks like he's aged about thirty years since Kaidan last saw him. "Must've been hell out here," he murmurs.

"Yeah. You know I was born in London?"

Kaidan shakes his head, watching the city burn below them. But Shepard smiles. "You'll have to show me the sights, then."

Kaidan squeezes her hand as Anderson laughs. "Sure thing, Commander. It'll need a new coat of paint first, though."

Shepard shifts to look up at Kaidan, a twinkle in her eye. "You might have to help with that," she orders, as she traces her finger along his arm.

"I'm looking forward to it," he tells her, honestly.


	26. Crucible

The shuttle skims low to the ground and dumps them onto a landing strip cleared out in an unnaturally calm island in the storm. Anderson's resistance has somehow managed to carve out a defensible position, fortifying most of a city block. The burnt out buildings are ringed by AA guns and protected by ground tanks. The Admiral scrambles onto a pile of melted slag, already pulling out his omnitool as he makes his way upward to the high ground where his people keep a constant watch for approaching enemy forces. He tells Shepard to meet up with him when she's ready. Kaidan casts a quick glance at Vega, who hovers over the Commander's shoulder uncertainly.

"You two go on ahead," Shepard orders. "I'll catch up."

"Anna..."

"_I'll catch up_," she insists, and Kaidan knows that arguing with her would serve no purpose. He nods.

"Okay. Just... don't take too long."

He watches her disappear further into the makeshift command center. The familiar sights and sounds of war surround him with a carefully controlled chaos. Tanks rumble past him down the wide thoroughfare of what used to be a neighborhood street. He finds himself hovering close against the walls of the crumbling buildings to avoid being flattened. He's one of the higher ranking officers here; a fact not lost on the dozens of assembled soldiers saluting him when they pass, and looking to him for guidance. He finally ducks into a cleared out storefront where a vidcom projector has been set up.

"Can you patch me through to Spec. Ops? First Division?"

"Of course, Major."

The technician fiddles with hardwired dials and streams of numbers, and Kaidan spends the next half an hour taking reports from his trainees scattered all over the planet. Only a few of them are here in London, and they are hunkered down in contested districts so inaccessible to him that they might as well be on the other side of the world. He concentrates on the enemy fire visible in the background of the call more than on the younger man he's talking to.

"Don't worry, sir. You trained us well. We've held out this long."

The look on his face is stubborn and strong, and Kaidan smiles in spite of himself. He nods. "Make me proud, Lieutenant."

"See you on the other side. Don't forget: you promised us all drinks before you disappeared to save the galaxy."

"Yeah. I won't forget."

He turns away from the console and the technician disconnects the call. Kaidan scrubs his hand over his face and settles in to wait. There are a thousand things that need doing: wounded to care for, ammo to stock and reload, broken tools to repair, yet he sits here _waiting_. It's enough to drive him crazy; the most unsettling part of war is _this_: the quiet, where there's nothing to do _but _worry, psych himself up or psych himself out.

"Hey, Kaidan."

He spins around, and relaxes even though he shouldn't, as Shepard strides toward him with confident steps. He smiles. "Hey."

Anna tucks herself in close to his body and he wraps his arm around her without thinking. At this point, neither of them care what anyone else might think or say; the regulations they are breaking no longer matter. "You ready?" she asks.

"Absolutely. Bring it on."

"Good. Now say it like you mean it."

He sighs. "Just talked to my students," he admits. "Biotics division. They're all charged up, _eager_. Guess that's youth for you. I just feel old."

"Yeah," Shepard admits, and once again he notes how _tired_ she looks, exhaustion that goes beyond anything physical. Her eyes are dull and haunted. "Old soldiers, right?"

"We know the score," he agrees, heavily. "We know this is -"

"No way." She puts her hand over his lips, the gentle push of her fingers is warm enough to light a fire that trails up from the pit of his stomach, licking up his spine. He tightens his grip on her, looping his arm around her waist and pulling her closer. "When this is over," she demands. "I'm gonna be waiting for you. You better show up."

The way she says it, he not only can't refuse, he _believes _it. In this moment in doesn't matter what the odds are, what the world looks like out there. The only thing that's important is the way she feels in his arms. Since when have the odds mattered for her anyway? He only hopes he can keep up.

"I am gonna fight like hell to hold you again," he swears.

"Damn right."

"But Anna, just... _listen_, okay? There are things I wanna say, and..." he stops, faltering for just a moment. But he pushes on. Because he _knows _that no matter how much this hurts, _not saying_ these things will hurt a thousand times worse; it will destroy him. "Looking back... I have a few regrets, but not many..." He tangles his fingers through the sweaty knots of hair clinging to the back of her neck. Most of those regrets have to do with her. He wonders if she knows that. "I mean, that's pretty amazing, isn't it? Messed up kid that I was... I'd never have imagined this life I've had. And I owe... a lot of it, to you."

"Kaidan..."

"Shh." He leans down to kiss her, to look into her eyes, he inhales the taste of her. "You don't have to be a hero for me," he finally murmurs. "How are you doing? Scared?"

She tenses up for just a moment, and he is certain she is going to lie. And he'll let her, if that's what she needs. But then she nods. "Hell yeah," she whispers. "Of course."

"But..."

"But that fear is gonna keep me alive long enough to strike these bastards right through the heart."

"Exactly. Because I _can't_ lose you again."

Anna pulls him into a fierce kiss, silencing his protests, swallowing his words. She doesn't have to say anything. Her fingers brush against his cheek. He pulls her down until they're both gasping for air, forced to break apart. Kaidan gulps down a desperate mouthful of oxygen and refuses to let go of her.

She looks him in the eye for a long moment, and then gently shakes him off. "Just take care of yourself, Major."

He frowns, searching her expression for any hint of what's going on in her head. The harsh dichotomy between the cold professionalism of her words and the heat of her actions is enough to give him whiplash. She gives his hand a quick squeeze.

"Yeah," he mutters, knowing that moving forward is what they need to do right now. He'd thought a clean break might hurt less. But he's still following her into hell. There's no such thing as a clean break, not for them. Not after they've been through so much together.

"Kaidan, your squad's gonna need a leader," Anna tells him, as he follows close on her heels when she goes to report to Anderson.

Clean breaks be damned. "They've _got_ one," he demands.

He honestly doesn't even think it's fair to call it his squad anymore, not when he'd left them behind to join up with her. He doesn't regret it for a second, but there is still that nagging tingle of guilt. If it were Anderson or Hackett telling him to rejoin Biotics Division, he wouldn't even consider disobeying the order.

"It's different now," Shepard insists. "You know it. We don't let... _us_ get in the way of the mission. We promised, remember?"

"God, Anna, that was a million years ago. _It's different now_," he repeats. "I'm not leaving you alone."

"I won't _be _alone," she retorts stubbornly.

"Anna, I won't leave you again!" he shouts. "I _won't_! You can't ask me to, not now!"

People are starting to stop what they're doing to stare at them. He doesn't care.

Shepard shakes her head, refusing to meet his eyes, and that's how he knows he's won. "Kaidan, you _know_ this isn't the kind of trip you come back from. _All of these people_... they're... they're only here to buy time."

"Then I'm with you until time runs out."

She blows out a long breath, and her eyes flicker up to his. "Okay."

"Okay," he agrees.

Anderson lays out their last desperate plan, one that involves Thanix missiles and Hammer Squad's severely depleted tank divisions and the phrase _"at all costs."_

"We'll make it happen, sir," Shepard asserts. Kaidan wishes he could feel as optimistic as she sounds.

The crew of the Normandy gathers around as Anderson goes to make one last check of their preparations. The ground tanks begin rolling out. "You guys know how I am at speeches," Anna tells them, and Kaidan smiles. "You all know why we're here, what we have to do. All of you have _chosen_ to be here. Earth may not be your home, but stopping the Reapers has never been about one planet or one species or one person. _All of us_ fight together. And I am honored to serve alongside every single one of you. Let's go kick some ass!"

"Oooh-rah!" Vega shouts.

Shepard taps Kaidan and Garrus to watch her back when she makes her way to infiltrate the Reapers' Conduit beam.

Kaidan glances at the Turian, and Garrus nods in return. Garrus had taken care of Shepard when Kaidan didn't, looking out for her when she'd come back to life confused and controlled by the Illusive Man. He'd gone through the Omega 4 relay with her, a mission just as suicidal as the one they're about to launch. Kaidan had never known what to say to thank the other soldier. He still doesn't, but they both know words would be wasted. Kaidan jumps down behind Shepard as Garrus sights an approaching Reaper cannibal is his rifle scope and fires. It seems right that it should be the two of them with her now.

Get up to the Citadel. Open the arms. Dock the Crucible. Win the war.

It almost sounds easy when it's laid out like that.

But they scramble for every meter, every _step_. The Reapers swarm them with wave after wave of heavily armored ground forces that don't care about unit cohesion or tactics. The already-decimated Hammer tank squads crumble further under the relentless assaults.

"They're coming at us from behind," screams a voice on the radio feeding into Kaidan's helmet.

"They're coming at us from everywhere!"

Kaidan stops thinking. He sights, shoots, and reloads until he has no ammo left. He throws blasts of biotic energy at everything that comes near him. He can feel blood pouring from his nose, his eardrums rattle inside his skull. The low, lingering vibrations sent out by the nearby Reaper's every step shake him down to the core. His head is screaming with pain that tears through his nerves like fire, quite literally about to explode. He keeps moving.

Shepard works with EDI through fragile satellite links to target the guns and take down the Reaper. He's reminded of Rannoch, and he's glad that this time at least he's here to guard her.

"Firing!" she yells, and Kaidan watches as the Reaper falls, ripped apart in a ball of fire that explodes through whatever's left of downtown.

The aftermath seems disturbingly quiet. Kaidan's fingers twitch at his side, unused to being still. He holds tightly to his gun. His head still throbs. He wipes his sleeve across his face, trying to clear away the worst of the blood and gore.

"Sit tight, Shepard," Anderson's voice cuts in, somehow sounding simultaneously frazzled and reassuring. "We're on our way to your position."

The transport will get them to the beam. The beam will get them to the Citadel.

Kaidan repeats their checklist in his head like a mantra.

"It gets worse," the Admiral informs them soberly when he rolls up with the cavalry.

_Of course it does._

They'd cleared their path of the Reaper standing in their way. They'd lost nearly all of their remaining tank divisions doing it. And now the Reapers are simply sending in reinforcements. Harbinger, and several more Reapers along with him. There is no chance of fighting them off.

_They're only buying time._

"We just need to get a handful of troops through," Anderson confirms. Shepard sighs, but she nods.

_You know they call us the Suicide Squad?_

Just a handful, but they'll do it.

_At all costs._

The beam shines bright, drawing them in, like moths to a flame: they'll die burning.

Shepard runs. Kaidan follows, reaching out, but too far behind to catch her.

Searing lasers wipe out whole tanks, reducing them to their component atoms when they're caught in the beams. The ground quakes beneath their feet. Kaidan sees Shepard stumble, but she turns the motion into a roll and picks herself back up. He sighs in relief.

The shaking red light suddenly mixes with white as the Reaper beam picks up one of the Alliance transports and tosses it away like a child flinging a toy. A wall of armored metal flies toward Kaidan. He scrambles backward but cannot outrun it. He ducks, curling into a crouching cover with his arms over his head. His heart pounds and the pain in his head explodes as he forces up a flickering biotic barrier. He pushes outward, and he hears the tank impact against the ground with a heavy crash, away from him. Then everything goes black.


	27. At All Costs

His head still hurts. Voices overlap but he can't pick out any specific ones or understand the words. His body shakes with the familiar vibrations of a ship moving through space underneath him. The cool, smooth metal against his back confirms this impression. His eyes flicker open and harsh light floods in, sending more specific searing spikes of pain along his neural pathways. Nausea twists in his stomach, and he manages to roll onto his side just in time to expel its contents.

"Gross, dude," someone says, but the voice humorous jibe falls flat. The voice is too half-hearted and tired.

Kaidan coughs and spits, reluctant to open his eyes again. "Vega?" he groans.

A hand rests against his cheek, feeling colder than it should. He squirms. "Kaidan..." a calming voice. His body settles, relaxing into the touch. He slowly blinks his eyes open again, and though pain still pounds at his temples, he is able to breathe, to slowly focus on the woman in front of him. Concerned dark eyes stare down at him, framed by long lashes... and blue skin.

"Liara."

"Thank the goddess. When we pulled you onto the Normandy..."

Her words drown under the crashing wave of memories that fight for his attention: violent shaking, scorched earth, fire and explosions and shouted orders and dying screams. And that last-ditch biotic throw that saved his life. He remembers when Anna had told him they'd found her huddled in the wreckage under the remnants of a similar barrier on Mindoir.

"Where is she?" he asks. Raw panic claws at his throat. He barely forces the words out. Nobody needs to guess who he's talking about.

Liara slowly shakes her head.

"Shepard called in the evac just in time to get you to safety and-"

"You should've picked her up too!"

"She ordered us not to!" Vega demands.

"So what?"

"Kaidan, you know she had to be the one to go to the Citadel," Liara says, more gently. "No one else could do it."

He shakes his head, grateful for the agony the motion ignites. The pain centers him. "That's not true!" he insists stubbornly. "It _never_ had to be her. Anybody can do it. Everybody else just wants to sit back and watch her _sacrifice herself_. Why not, right? As long a-"

New, more urgent pain flares up as Vega's fist connects with his jaw. He'd be flat on his back if he wasn't already there. "How dare you?" the Lieutenant shouts. Kaidan pushes himself up and lashes out with a wave of biotic energy that sends Vega crashing into the Normandy's wall of armory lockers.

"Stand down!" That's Garrus. Kaidan glares daggers at the Turian, but slowly shuts down the flickers of biotic energy still leaping from his skin in static sparks.

"We don't gain anything by killing one another," Liara adds softly.

"I was supposed to stay with her!" Kaidan cries. He launches himself toward the shuttle bay doors, blind and stupid. The ship has long since left atmo, the magnetically sealed airlock must be overridden from the bridge, and he already knows it's too late to make a difference.

Garrus grabs his arm roughly and pulls him back. "_You would have died,_" he says slowly, clearly enunciating each word to get the point through his thick skull.

Kaidan holds his gaze for a long moment, refusing to say out loud what they both must know: Shepard _did_ die, alone down there, without him. Again.

He shoves Garrus away from him and hauls himself to the elevator. CIC is a hollow shell. No one will look at him. Traynor lingers at her console, forced to listen as dozens of channels go dark. The ones that are still broadcasting are even harder to hear.

"... get anyone to the beam?" someone asks, amid the crackle of static.

"-egative."

The word sink over him like a heavy blanket, drawing him down. They always knew it was a long shot, but it _crushes_ him. She died alone, for _nothing_.

After everything, the Reapers will still win.

Tears sting his eyes and splash into his waiting hands. He didn't cry after the SR-1, but that was a different kind of pain: more uncertain. Now he cries for everything he's lost and will lose. Traynor hovers over him, wringing her hands - the communications specialist who knows there is nothing that can be said. She stops fiddling with the signals and sits down next to him. Kaidan wonders how long it will take for the Reapers to target the Normandy and rip it apart. Despite himself, his body responds to the thought with a desperate flood of adrenaline: memories of the Collector ship's laser beams melting through bulkheads, smoke and fires, and panicked shouts. No matter how much he thinks he's ready to die, human survival instinct rises up strong, insisting that he _can't_ go through that again.

He will, though.

The Protheans couldn't stop the Reapers 50,000 years ago, and they had so much more knowledge, more advanced technology, layers of backup plans and time to prepare. If all of that was not enough, what made him ever think Shepard alone could alter the inevitable?

He closes his eyes and waits. He wonders if he could overload his own implant on purpose, fry out his brain. It would _hurt_, if his body would even let him do it. Maybe it's like drowning... a reflex that would bring him back up for air before he goes under.

"Kaidan..." Traynor's soft voice is, inexplicably, the first thing he hears before he registers Admiral Hackett's louder command booming over the fleetwide emergency comm.

"This is the Admiral. We've got reports that someone made it to the Citadel."

Kaidan's heart starts beating again, he starts to breathe.

He picks himself up and runs for the bridge.

Joker grins. "I knew it," he whispers fiercely.

"All fleets: the Crucible is armed," Admiral Hackett continues. "Disengage and head for the rendezvous point. I repeat: _disengage. _Get the hell out of here."

Joker swipes frantically at the controls, pushing forward _toward _the Citadel. The Normandy could get in before the fleet could notice or stop them.

But it won't be able to get out.

Kaidan rests his hand over Joker's, gently steering it away from the thruster he's reaching for.

The pilot just looks at him; the pain written so clearly on his face resonates with every fiber of Kaidan's body. "I know," he says simply, his voice breaking along with his heart. "But we have to."

_"I'm gonna be waiting for you. You better show up."_

If she survives, she'll find him. If she doesn't... if she doesn't, then nothing they do will be able to change it. Either way, he knows she'd never forgive him for killing himself after she'd done everything she could to keep him alive.

Joker - the man Shepard had already sacrificed herself once to save - knows it too.

_"Dammit_!" the pilot screams, pounding his fist against the console.

But he turns the Normandy back toward the rest of the fleet.

They jump through the relay, and Kaidan collapses into the co-pilot's seat.

The silence of their grief is broken by alarm klaxons screaming as a pulse of bright light races toward them: the Crucible's energy chasing them through the relays to find the Reapers in every system across the galaxy, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake as the system collapses, ripped apart by the sheer force expended.

The backlash from the explosion catches them, clipping the Normandy's wings. Joker flips switches and struggles and swears and wrests control of the ship from the laws of physics for just long enough to pull them clear of the dying relay, but he cannot steer them home.

Kinetic barriers are down. Main computer systems are offline, along with life support. Emergency backups are flickering with an imitation of life; they will not hold.

They are no longer flying but falling, caught in the orbit of a nearby, unknown planet, pulled down by the grasping claws of gravity.

Kaidan looks out for just long enough to see _trees_ waiting to catch them as they burn through the thick clouds of lower atmosphere. Thick green leaves splash against the viewport.

At least the world they've hit is warm. Not like Alchera. The thought is briefly comforting as the shock of impact hits and everything flashes white.

"'m sorry, Shepard," he murmurs. He thinks his lips form the words but he isn't sure.

_I love you._ That part, he doesn't have time to say.

He stretches out his hand, reaching for her. Only emptiness reaches back.


	28. Breaking and Building

Kaidan blinks his eyes open slowly, taking careful stock of his situation.

Through blurry vision he begins to make out smooth metal lines, sharp angles and careful curves. They slowly come together in his mind to form recognizable shapes, objects: a chair, a console, a bulkhead, a viewport... He recognizes familiar buttons, though every time he'd seen them before now, they'd glowed with a reassuring light.

This is the Normandy.

This is the Normandy, and he's not dead.

He hurts, all over, but the pain is a general catalogue of discomfort rather than a sharp, screaming agony. Nothing broken, probably. Nothing life-threatening. Just bruising, and lots of it. Also a throbbing headache, but the regular kind, the kind that comes from his body reacting to being thrown around in a tin can. He inhales carefully, long and slow, and blows the breath out again. A quick test, a tiny push, proves that if his implant had gotten rattled again during the fall, it's sorted itself out.

Thick straps still cut tight into his shoulders and chest - the safety harness he doesn't remember locking on, but he must've, sometime before they hit the ground. He frowns down at it, fumbling with uncertain fingers until he manages to work the clasp. His glances over to his left, the sound of soft moaning and the shifting motion of another human being drawing his attention.

Joker. The pilot stares at him glassy eyes. His face is pale and contorted with pain. Kaidan's training as a field medic takes over, which is good, because it allows him to push back the uncertainties and questions for a while.

"Think I broke something," Joker whines, through clenched teeth. "Maybe everything."

Kaidan runs his hands in gentle, careful motions, searching for signs. The right arm is the worst: a visible break, and a rough one, bone visible punching through the flesh. Joker's breath comes in sharp, ragged gasps as Kaidan's fingers make contact.

"It's gonna hurt," Kaidan admits. "There's no way around it."

Joker nods, bizarrely calm. "I know."

Kaidan squeezes the man's left hand in what he hopes is a reassuring manner. "Yeah, I guess you would."

With his migraines and Joker's Vrolik's Syndrome, they make quite a pair. It's amazing the Normandy manages to keep painkillers stocked. Kaidan releases a dose of medigel into Joker's system, enough to dull the pain enough to get the other man down to medbay. Although moving the pilot will hurt more in the immediate short-term, it's a hell of a lot kinder in the long run to let Chakwas and her full stock of supplies take care of the man. Joker seems to know it too. He doesn't even protest when Kaidan picks him up and begins to carry him toward the elevator. Which stubbornly refuses to open, no matter how often he screams at it or kicks.

"Lost power," Joker murmurs, and Kaidan nods. "Guess we do this the hard way then."

"Sorry," Kaidan murmurs, again. He tries to be careful, but the emergency access ladders are confined spaces, and there's no way to get Joker through them without jolting him and banging against walls. Kaidan thinks there may be another break or two by the time he gets the pilot to the crew deck. Between shock and the medigel's anesthetic, Joker is largely unresponsive. Chakwas takes one look at the two of them and frowns, then motions Kaidan to one of the beds, taking over with smooth professionalism as soon as he lays the pilot down.

"He'll be okay, won't he?"

The doctor nods, her hands moving purposefully as she checks Joker over. She connects an IV full of stronger anesthesia to his left arm and gets to work on the severe fracture. "About a dozen breaks. The arm's the worst, as you've no doubt already noticed. It is, unfortunately, nothing we haven't been through before. Just a little more severe than usual."

Kaidan nods. "Is anyone else..."

"Hurt. Not dead. Crew was prepared for a rough evac. Strapped in, and we never were shot at. The barriers seem to have held up through most of the entry, kept us all from bouncing around too much. Or at least that's what I got from Engineer Adams."

"Good," Kaidan replies. He processes the information in some logical part of his brain that he's not ready to fully pay attention to. "That's good."

Doctor Chakwas smiles. "It certainly is. Sit down, Kaidan. I'd like to check you over as well."

"I'm _fine_."

"I highly doubt that. From what I heard, you were in some serious trouble in the -"

"I said I'm fine!" Kaidan snaps. He doesn't want to think about the battle. Earth. Leaving Shepard. He finds his body reacting without his conscious consent, ready to fight his way back to her. He never would have left her if he'd been coherent enough to stop it. And he knows Shepard would know that. Another fight she'd won. He never could talk her down.

He sinks onto the chair across from the Doctor's desk and lets her check him over. There are monitors she attaches to his arm; the old fashioned kind; not the omnitool scans he's used to. She shines a light in his eyes. He stops paying attention.

"Well, you're better off than Joker," she finally says. "Physically, at least." Chakwas puts down her medical tools and sits down across from him. He doesn't look up, focusing instead on a ring left behind on her desk, from a coffee mug maybe? "I know it's hard, Kaidan, but we need you here with us. We need you focused. The crew is going to look to you for leadership."

He blinks, finally beginning to process a few of her words. He stares at her. "Why?"

"You're the ranking officer on the Normandy now," she reminds him gently.

"I'm not Shepard! I can't..."

Chakwas puts her hand over his and begins massaging her fingers over his skin in purposeful circles. He wonders if she even notices she's doing it, if it's on purpose. He resists the urge to pull his hand away. "Nobody's asking for that," she tells him.

No, their only asking for someone to step up and take command, figure out where to go, what to do, how to fix all the things that are broken. He doesn't think he can. But he nods anyway, and when the doctor salutes him and calls him Major it only feels halfway like a lie. He's been here before: adrift and uncertain. He knows how to throw up a barrier even stronger than the one his biotics can produce, how to hide behind it until everyone believes he's undamaged.

Doctor Chakwas is right about there being a lot to do. It starts with assessing exactly where they are, and what they have to work with. There is nothing functioning on the Normandy. It is little more than a metal shell now. Non-networked tech, like the basic functions of most of their omnitools, still run, but there is no communication. They've been cut off from everything, from everyone... without even the galaxy map to tell them how close or far they are from the RV point and any hope of rescue.

At least the planet is habitable: even pleasant, as far as such things go. Breathable air, gravity somewhat heavier than earth-standard, but not impossible to manage. Warm weather, but calm, for the most part. They have enough supplies on the ship to last for quite some time. Nothing fancy: in the absence of power, they'll be eating ration bars and nutri-pastes, at least until Chakwas determines if any of the native plants are safe for consumption.

Kaidan likes having a lot to do. It allows him to drift through the days in a sort of unreal haze. Lack of communication means he doesn't have to hear the answer to the question that haunts every beat of his heart.

They want to have a memorial. Garrus hacks and welds and solders, turning broken metal into art, but Kaidan isn't okay with it. He almost pulls rank on the Turian when he comes to him with a time, asks if he wants to speak at the ceremony. But he shows up. Still, when they hand him the nameplate he holds tightly to because it's the only way to prevent himself from hurling it as far away from himself as he can. And when Vega finishes attaching Admiral David Anderson's name to the wall, and turns to him, he doesn't move.

"We don't know for sure!" he insists fiercely.

"Kaidan..."

"_No_."

God, why can't they _understand_? He's done this once already, and it was okay. He'd been... okay. Not good, but stable; able to move forward. What wrecked him was when she came back, and he'd thrown accusations in her face before she could throw them at him first; he'd pushed her farther away before she could ask how he could give up on her when he didn't know _for sure_. He'd abandoned her. He'd promised he wouldn't, but he did.

They all stare at him for several long heartbeats. Garrus makes a subharmonic noise that somehow manages to sound like a human clearing his throat. Vega clenches and unclenches his fist at looks away as soon as he notices that Kaidan's noticed. It's Joker who finally takes a limping step forward and rests a hand on Kaidan's shoulder. "I know," he says softly. "But we have to."

_We don't have to!_ Kaidan's mind screams.

But as he takes another look around at the crew - _her crew_ - he knows they do. They need some kind of closure, a way to say all of the things that he's too afraid to put into words: "Goodbye." "Thank you, for everything." Even "I love you." Because they all do, in their own ways.

He looks at Joker again, glances back to the wall, where the pilot has added EDI's name to the list of those who lost their lives serving aboard the Normandy. He isn't the only one who's lost somebody, and Joker understands.

He runs his fingers over the smooth metal plate. They catch in the deep grooves of the letters as he traces them. He reads the words with his body, not needing to look at them. Not _wanting _to. Because if he does, it feels too much like betrayal, like admitting that everything she was could be contained in a simple nameplate.

Tears prick at his eyes again, though they don't fall. He draws in a shaky breath, and nods. And then he takes the metal nameplate and slams it against the wall, locking it into the cold and empty slot that sits waiting to accept it. He pounds his fist against it and now the tears do splash down as he lets the anger and grief bleed away.

"Shepard," he mouths, crying her name silently. He won't let go of the wall, won't let go of this tangible thing that is a symbol of her, even as he hates it. He is vaguely aware of Joker's presence, the pilot's hand over his, and somehow he still remembers that it had been the two of them sitting together on the bridge of the Normandy SR-1 when he'd first met Shepard, striding onto the ship like she owned it, like she owned _them_. "Her boys," she'd taken to calling them. He smiles a little even as he cries, and Joker begins to laugh.

* * *

**Notes: **So, this is it. The end of the story. It somehow feels... really _wrong_, and really difficult, to disengage. But it feels like closure to me, just the same. And though I did not "win" the Novel Writing Month challenge by the letter of the rules, hitting just under 50,000 words in just over 30 days, I think I did win the spirit of the challenge. Thank you for everyone who has given me such support through the endeavor - it is so appreciated. This is absolutely not the end of my adventures in writing Mass Effect... just maybe it won't be the _only_ thing I do with my life, for a while :)


End file.
